


COSMIC ORDER, NATURAL LAW: the spaces between your breaths are the spaces where stars are born.

by CaptainDude (HandbagMurder)



Category: South Park
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Boys Being Awkward, Coming of Age, Complicated Emotional Silliness, Drama, Drug Use Mentions, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Implied Cartman/Wendy, Implied Kenny/Butters, Issues of Sexuality, M/M, Magical Realism, Masturbation, Medication, Mentions of Clyde/Bebe, Mentions of Craig/Bebe, Mentions of Craig/Kennny, Mentions of Mental Illness, Mentions of Stan/Kyle, Mentions of Stan/Wendy, Romance, Tentative Exploration and Teenage Nervousness, Tobacco use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2015-11-18
Packaged: 2018-02-22 07:21:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 102,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2499410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandbagMurder/pseuds/CaptainDude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Craig's father tells him to get a job over the summer, he doesn't have all that much choice but to take an available position at the locally owned coffee shop. Unfortunately, this summertime occupation coincides with numerous social and hormonal developments, and the ups and downs of a very, very strange teenaged boy. </p><p>CraigxTweek, a little bit of CraigxKenny, more tags will be added as the story progresses. </p><p>do pretend this entire premise is not actually incredibly trite. Dandy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hour long youtube videos talking about aliens narrated by Microsoft Sam

**Author's Note:**

> hi im mars and im a meme loving fuck

 

It was a relatively regular Sunday afternoon. The sky was the colour of ashes and the gutters were clotted with the last of slushy spring snow. Each window along the street front glinted in the sun sleepily, and even though it was only just gone two pm the evening was setting in and preparing to linger. In the spring, the sunset lasted long after the occupants of South Park had shut their curtains and tuned in to the seven pm news, and even though it had stopped snowing it wasn’t yet warm enough to turn down the heat pumps indoors. Craig Tucker, a reluctant morning person and full time hater of the cold, resisted the temptation to get out of bed all morning. It wasn’t until he started seeing orange tones in the sunlight that crept under his bedroom curtains that he dragged himself out of bed and pulled a hat over rumpled black hair. His watch said 2.17pm, and he realised that he had already wasted in its entirety the best part of the day.

He wasn’t all that bothered. He made his way downstairs in the usual fashion, and found that beyond the slightly sweaty dimness of his bedroom the house was cosy. A great fortune, considering that despite the effort he had made to cover his head he wore no t-shirt or jumper or singlet top. His father and sister were in the kitchen, and his mother was most likely in the lounge watching TV. A normal Sunday afternoon. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening. And so he had no reason to be alert or uneasy as he approached the refrigerator and its contents. His breakfast prospects were slim, his mother wouldn’t be going to the grocery store until tomorrow afternoon, but before he had time to bemoan this his sister was taking a great breath of air and turning to him, as though she had something of great unimportance to say.

“You’re such an asshole Craig,” she was standing at the bench making some kind of peanut butter and jelly abomination, and Craig eyed her knife warily wondering if she was going to plunge the sticky jelly covered blade back into the jar of peanut butter when she was finished with it. “I heard you playing your dumb computer games until five am! No wonder you sleep in until after lunch every day!”

“… Maybe I don’t come downstairs until after lunch every day because I can’t deal with looking at your face.”

He took a can of diet coke out of the box in the vegetable crisper and pulled the tab. His sister’s jaw dropped open like he had just punched her in the face.

“Craig, don’t talk to your sister like that. Put some clothes on and sit down at the table, I want to have a serious discussion with you about something.”

His dad put down the hefty car manual he had been reading and studied Craig coldly over his reading glasses.

Thomas Tucker was an intimidating looking man of astonishing height, and it was this height which Craig had reluctantly inherited at some point between nine and fifteen years of age. Craig might have been more respectful, even afraid, of him and his disapproving demeanour, if he hadn’t proven himself time and time again to be all threats and rude gestures and no commitment whatsoever to disciplining his children. His bald spot had grown over the years, and his chin had tripled, but he still had sharp beady eyes and the clout of a person who knew that so long as their eldest son wanted to live under their roof, he would have to abide by their rules. Mostly, he served as a grim but comforting reminder that some day Craig would be fifty and unattractive too, with his own louty little brats and a morbidly pessimistic worldview which would enable him to enjoy his life more than anyone who had ever had the misfortune of having dreams or aspirations.

“Okay, cool.” Craig shut the fridge door and shuffled over to the table. “What do you want?”

His father looked distastefully at the soda and at the bareness of Craig’s chest and shoulders, but didn’t say anything about how slobby it was to just walk around half dressed and drinking coke on a Sunday afternoon. Which was grand. Craig didn’t really want to talk about it with him anyway.

“Your mother and I were talking about how you said you wanted a new computer for your birthday.”

“Right.”

“And we decided that we agree with you on the point that you are going to need an upgrade if you plan to go to college at the end of senior year.”

Oh, thank Christ. Craig closed his eyes briefly and said a quick and grateful word to God. Not because he really believed in the God per se, but because he believed in giving credit where credit was due. There was no way in _hell_ that his father was the kind of person to just be generous just because of Craig’s well thought out argument for his cause, and through the process of deduction it was clear some kind of divine intervention must have occurred. A modern miracle. It was about fucking time something good happened in his life, that’s for sure.

“Oh. Okay.”

“What?! If Craig gets a new computer _I_ want a computer too!”

The knife clattered on the bench when his sister tossed it down, and her interjection was like nails scraping across the inside of Craig’s skull. His father sighed and shook his head tiredly.

“Stay out of this.”

“But I want-!”

“ _Shush!_ I’m talking to your brother.”

Craig tried not to be too amused when she stomped her foot and stormed off, abandoning her sandwich and most likely going to complain to their mother about how Craig was demanding more money from his tight fisted parents for things he didn’t actually need. Like socks.

Thomas sighed and rubbed his temples in frustration.

“Goddamnit…”

“Dad, can we get back to the point? I kinda have plans this afternoon.”

He didn’t, but he wanted to reach some kind of an agreement as soon as possible. Just in case his dad changed his mind and they hadn’t shook on it.

“Right. Right. No, like I was saying, you should get a new computer. But you know we can’t really _afford_ one right now.”

“Yeah we can.” Craig’s family had been stashing money for years. Ever since Craig was nine and his mother went out of work for sixteen months. Even after she found a part time cleaning job at Tom’s Rhinoplasty the scrimping continued, and even though Craig knew they were more well off than some families in town, like the McCormicks or Leanne Cartman, he didn’t really remember what it was like living in a household of luxury goods and recreational spending. “Just use some money from the savings account.”

“… No. no we can’t do that.”

“How come?”

“ _We can’t do that_ , son. Now can I finish?”

“Right. Right.” Craig tightened his grip on his soda can in annoyance, and decided not to pursue it until he heard where the rest of this proposition was going. What had previously been relief that his parents had relented was beginning to morph into suspicion. He wasn’t going to try and load Craig with a crappy second hand MacBook was he? Or worse, a desktop PC his place of employment didn’t need any more. The thought of trying to run Skyrim on that kind of dinosaur machine made Craig’s blood turn cold. 

“We cant afford a new laptop right now, so what we decided was that seeing as summer starts on Monday, and you won’t have anything much to do over the break, we want you to get a job.”

Oh god.

Craig’s face turned stony, and suddenly the rattling old Dell PC with Vista and Microsoft office 2003 pre-installed didn’t seem so bad after all.

“You what?”

“A job. You know. Money in exchange for physical labour. Your mother and I will look at how much you earn at the end of the summer and if we think you tried hard enough, we are willing to pay the extra to buy you a new laptop.”

Oh well why didn’t he just get Craig to lie on the floor and shit all over his face?

Clearly, His father took the silence which followed this proposition as being ponderous, rather than furious to the furtherst limits of teenage rage, and the dining table chair creaked under his weight as he sat back and heaved a mighty sigh.

“You know I saw a help wanted sign in the window of Tweek Bros. Coffee the other day.”

“ _Tweek Bros.?_ ” that snapped Craig out of the cyclone of anger and shock faster than anything else might possibly have hoped to. “You know the people who run that place are insane, right?”

“Good God Craig, don’t argue for once.” his father gave him a dark look and folded his arms over his chest. “Isn’t the son a friend of yours or something?”

“No! Fuck no!”

Craig hadn’t spoken to Tweek Tweak of his own free will for at least four years. No one had. Maybe once they had gotten on pretty well once, maybe even been good friends, but it was inevitable that growing up meant letting go of some people and when middle school rolled around it was hardly a surprise that that one kind of quirky guy Craig had liked well enough in fourth grade became a total social pariah. He just turned plain weird. If anyone was to ask Craig (Not that they would) he would probably have to say that it was during the three month period in eighth grade that Tweek had been sent to a special school in Denver for the psychologically questionable. The nervous disposition which always kind of haunted Tweek really started to take root in his delicate psyche then, but mind, even before them being around him was difficult sometimes. He always seemed to look at people as though he didn’t believe they were really real. Like he was expecting them to pull off their humanoid masks and leap at him with gnarly alien teeth and talons and assign him hundreds responsibilities Tweek just didn’t want to take on. Like making a basic phone call, or ordering the beef noodle stir fry off the City Wok menu without flipping his shit entirely.

“Craig, you do as you’re damn well told. If you don’t get a job not only will you not get your laptop but we will send you to summer camp, and I can guarantee you that this time we will not drive across half the country to pick you up just because you got in a brawl with a goddamned counsellor.”

Jesus Christ. Craig huffed and gritted his teeth, because that had only been _one time_ and he was beginning to suspect that actually, him being told to get a job had more to do with getting him out from under his parents feet all summer than getting a new computer. Because apparently he was just _such_ a challenge to deal with sometimes, this abnormally tall slightly pimply youth who lived almost exclusively on diet coke and pc games.

“Dad!”

“Don’t argue! Don’t argue or I will unplug the modem again.”

Oh how Craig hated his parents sometimes. How much of that was genuine dislike and how much was just the vitriol of rebellious teendom it was hard to tell, but there was no denying that his dads passive aggressive approach to parenting really got Craig’s goat. Not just sometimes. Always.

Craig made a rude gesture at his father across the table. His father made one back.

The next morning, he headed down to Tweek Bros. Coffee, his fingers crossed in the bottom of his pockets that by now, the sign would have come down.

 

…

 

The ‘Help Wanted’ notice in the window of Tweek Bros. Coffee was hand written in black ballpoint pent, and it was in a spindly angular style of hand Craig recognized as soon as he saw it because it was the exact same writing Tweek used to fill his exercise books with when they were still kind of friends. The sign didn’t really say help wanted, it said _‘assistance needed, Inquire within. Blood type O(RH-) need not apply’_ , but that was probably some bizarre Tweekish way of saying ‘work available’ so it didn’t really matter in the end. Craig wasn’t particularly sure what his blood type was, but who cares? It was a coffee shop, not a goddamned hospital. He would just lie about it if he was asked.

He hoped he wouldn’t be asked, because he was already pretty damn uncomfortable as he lingered in front of the shop and tried to look nonchalant, and if there was one way to make him absolutely certain he was going to regret this more than necessary it was bizarre and somewhat invasive inquiries along that vein. How many times do you use the bathroom every day? Is your second toe slightly longer than your first one? Have you ever woken up at four am because you can hear radio transmissions coming from the back of your braces?

Craig took a deep breath and checked his reflection in the front window of the store. He found the bright weather and made his hat and hoodie combo look slightly ridiculous, but otherwise he thought he didn’t look too bad. Quite presentable. A regular looking teenager who was unusually dark considering both his parents were fair, and strangely slouched, as though his great height had always made him slightly unsure of how to direct his limbs. He certainly looked hireable though. And fairly clean even though he was only four months into his course of acne medication so his cheeks looked a little bit like the inflamed surface of the earth’s moon and his hoodie hadn’t been through the laundry in oh, maybe five weeks now? He made sure there was no one on the street to watch him do it and gave himself a quick sniff under the armpits. Axe roll on and cheep soap, same as usual.

And then he remembered he didn’t actually really _want_ this job, and so looking hireable or tidy to the man who had insisted on brewing coffee with hard drugs in it for _twelve years_ until he was busted by the state police shouldn’t actually be that high on his list of priorities. 

It was easy to be distracted when pissed off and in a hurry to get this whole thing over with. Craig shook himself, made absolutely _certain_ no one was on the streets to see him ducking in to the Tweak family business at nine twenty on a Monday morning, and let himself pass through the door.

The shop smelled overpoweringly of grinds, and inside there were a few regulars at tables reading newspapers, but mostly all that could be heard was the sound of the machinery behind the counter running and the weird radio station Tweek listened to playing softly. It sounded like something out of a decade that never was. The faded unreal tunes that might have been if the cold war had turned hot and Tweek had been born in a corrugated iron bomb shelter and raised on radioactive water. Which actually he probably could have been. It was hard to tell. The décor had been redone since the drug bust incident, and after paying a hefty fine Mr Tweak had reopened with a new aesthetic. That aesthetic appeared to be ‘mockbuster harbucks’. That is, he had pretty much ripped off every design aspect there was to rip off, but to a slightly lower quality to a borderline humorous effect.

It wasn’t _that_ bad though. Anyone who hadn’t been to an upscale coffee chain might have dismissed the glossy wooden counter and art neuvou ceiling lamps as the humble design efforts of small town USA. Maybe if Craig wasn’t such an asshole it could have been cute. Maybe.

When Craig approached the counter, he didn’t notice at first that the person leaning with bruised elbows on the till was the same person who sat in the back of chemistry muttering under his breath. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have walked all the way up there and craned his neck around, because until he was practically in the place he might stand to order he didn’t even notice the slumped figure, or his milk splattered apron, or the way that his eyes were closed as if he was taking a desperately needed nap. Not being so close would have enabled him to leave if he suddenly changed his mind, but it was too late for that now.

Oh dear.

He thinned his lips and tried not to let his discomfort show on his face.

Tweek was the kind of person who would have been exceptionally attractive if he wasn’t so anomalous, and for that, in some other lifetime, maybe Craig would have even been envious of him. If he didn’t have shadows like half moons under his eyes, and lips which were always split or busted up from being punched a few times behind the bike sheds after school, his face would have been a model of non-threatening handsomeness. The kind of boy a thirty five year old woman would point out to a twelve year old daughter and say ‘He’s handsome, don’t you think?’. The bruises on his arms seemed to be a side effect of the asprin he never stopped taking, and his doll blonde hair was always dishevelled because he had a terrible habit of running his fingers through it and pulling, and there was something horribly unnerving about seeing him with his eyes closed because usually he was so highly strung, so on edge, that Craig wondered if he could count on two hands the number of times he blinked every hour.

“Uh…” he coughed awkwardly, and wondered if he should give Tweek a poke to wake him up. “Hey. Are you like… asleep?”

He almost leapt backwards when one of Tweek’s eyes suddenly flashed open, and he had big eyes like the full moon. A cold seafoam green.

“I don’t sleep if I can help it.” He muttered. “Whaddyou want?”

Oh. Well. Craig tried not too look too much like it bothered him, that Tweek didn’t put any breaks on the creepy train for his first contribution to the conversation.

“… I saw the sign in the window so I thought I’d-“

“You haven’t come to make fun of me have you?” Tweek opened his other eye and stood up straight, and he was almost as tall as Craig which was surprising. “You haven’t spoken to me in years so sorry if I don’t believe you. What do you _really_ want?” he narrowed his eyes and put his hands flat on the counter. “Craig.”

Wow. Okay. Craig was detecting some hostile vibes, and he didn’t really know how to respond. He thought of what his dad would say, if he went home and said that the job had evaded him and that the guy who worked at the coffee shop freaked the shit out of him anyway.

 _You never even tried_ , would be the first thing that came out of his mouth. _You can’t have even tried. It can’t be that bad!_

He kept a firm grip on his wits and shook his head. “I’m just here for the job.”

“No, no you’re not. No one is ever here just for the job. Not really. What is this ‘job’ anyway?”

“Its… in the window? You wrote the fucking sign Tweek, I know you did I recognise your handwriting!”

Tweek looked seriously disturbed for a moment, as if he didn’t like the fact that Craig could recognise his penmanship, and his hands clawed on the surface of the countertop. It was a spotless countertop, but there were scratches in it, most likely from the savagery of Tweek’s severely bitten nails.

“Don’t swear in the shop please.”

“Uh… sorry?”

“You’re not sorry not really I can tell.” He turned away and started wringing his fingers. “Can I get you something to drink? We have black coffee or white coffee. That’s with milk. If you aren’t here on a dare you must want a drink…”

“No no. No, no. I _really_ am just here because I want a job. Just… seriously.”

“Seriously?” Tweek looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “You seriously seriously just came in because you wanted to ask about the job?”

“ _Yes_.”  He wanted to ask why the fuck would he come in here for any other reason, but he didsn’t want to send Tweek into an erratic spiral of nonsense accusations. He seemed to have gotten worse since Craig had last talked to him. A lot worse. But at least he had stopped twitching so much. Maybe it was because his parents had him on enough medications to knock out a horse.

“…. Okay then. Here.” He bent down and disappeared under the counter. His knees cracked loudly as he went, and Craig winced. “Fill out this form and bring it back.” The form was slapped on the counter by a seemingly disconnected hand, and when Craig took it, a pen appeared in much the same fashion. “This had better not be a trick okay?”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Craig took the form, and sat down to fill the damn thing out.  He tried very hard not to write too clearly.

 

…


	2. Cracked lips and blood noses from taking isotretinoin

Craig got up early again the next morning, his alarm starting at eight and not stopping until eight oh seven when he decided that he couldn’t just ignore it any longer- he was going to have to get out of bed to turn it off. It didn’t help that the noise had stirred Mojo and Donnie, and although they were appropriate and likeable replacements for long deceased Stripe they made a hell of a lot more noise than he _ever_ did. With a tired groan he heaved himself out of bed and pulled his hat on, pacing barefoot to his desk where his alarm clock and the guinea pig cage stood.

He shut off the clock and dropped into his desk chair, not caring that it was heaped with t-shirts and a pair of cargo pants he hadn’t worn since Christmas when his grandmother gave them to him. He glanced outside, noticed that the sun was shining and it was probably going to be fairly warm, and decided at the back of his mind he would wear them. At least once in his life he should wear something that wasn’t black skinny jeans.

“Oh my god shut up.” He opened the cage and reached in to scratch his pets affectionately, and excited to see him looking through the bars they fell silent and scurried forward. Donnie was a fat little asshole, with a jet black coat and white on his crown. Mojo had long blonde hair that Craig had to comb out most evenings, to get the straw and knots out of it. He didn’t mind doing it as much as he liked to say.

“It’s not that exciting. Just the alarm. You know the alarm.”

He didn’t usually notice himself talking to the guinea pigs. It was one of those things which just kind of happened, and when he realised he was chatting to them as easily as he might have chatted to Token or Clyde he always ended up feeling self conscious and ridiculous. They were just pets. They didn’t understand him. But he talked to them absent mindedly all through the process of dressing himself, tugging on the cargo shorts and a band t-shirt he found in his drawers that didn’t smell _too_ bad. He hadn’t listened to the Pixies in years. Hopefully no one would ask him about it.

He really needed to revamp his summer wardrobe. It would be a lot easier if he had money. He could get money too, if only he had a…

He caught himself halfway through ranting to his pets about applying for a job. After the appropriate thirty seconds of awkward rambling had passed (‘ _oh my god what am I doing you guys don’t care you can’t even know what I’m talking about_ ’) he descended the stairs. His parents were in the kitchen, and so was his sister. She looked like she had just gotten out of bed.

“Your alarm woke me up again!” She told him.

“Good.”

Craig made a beeline for the fridge, and his morning can of diet soda.

His dad dropped him at the mall on his way to work, and they exchanged no more words than it took to say ‘By the way, I went to Tweek Bros yesterday and filled out an application form’, which was to be expected, but Craig would have appreciated a word of congratulations or a ten dollar note reward.

“Good. Let me know when they get back to you.”

And then his dad drove off and left him alone by the entrance to the car park. It was only nine twenty two am. His friends weren’t meeting him until ten.

He sat on the sidewalk and threw little chips of road gravel down the gutters. Hopefully, someone would come by early and distract him, from all the thoughts about jobs and finances spiralling around hopelessly in his head.

 

…

 

“No way dude! That totally sucks!”

“Yeah it does.”

Craig sat quietly next to Token at the food court table, divulging information about parental pressures to gain employment only when Token asked him why he looked so fucked off today. He neglected to mention that he had already applied for at least one position, because telling him or any of his friends exactly _where_ he had applied would be an effective way of reducing him to a utter laughing stock, and instead he just left it at ‘My olds are making me get a job.’

Of course, that made everybody sit up and tune in. Mostly because none of them had jobs, and had never even considered trying to get one.

Craig’s friends weren’t exactly the most motivated group of class acts who ever lived. They weren’t like Stan Marsh, who had gotten a job working at the animal shelter in twelfth grade, or Kyle Broflovski who earned ten dollars an hour working at the bookstore in the mall. They were the slightly more low-budget versions of that particular clique of socialites, and with the exception of Token (Who was associated with Craig’s group through choice rather than the prescriptions of popular opinion,) that was probably the way things had always been. It had just become more obvious when they went to high school and Stan and Kyle got to sit with the cheerleaders and the student executive committee. Even Eric Cartman had managed to make it in there somehow, and that bothered Craig to no end but it wasn’t like he could actually ever _do_ anything about it. He didn’t like complaining about persons higher than him on the social ladder because they were actually (excluding Cartman) pretty decent guys, and doing so made him look like a bitter little baby.

Which he was, but like fuck he was ever going to admit that at all.

“Blow or hand?”

Kenny McCormick raised his eyebrows and looked up from the napkin he was folding into an origami crane on the table. He had started hanging around with them around middle school, not because he ever stopped being friends with Stan and Kyle but because he decided the chances of getting any good T&A out o the girls those two hung out with were slim to none. It was a gross reason to jump ship on lifelong mates, and in honesty he was lucky that he was an extremely likeable sort of a guy (bizarre sexual idiosyncrasies not-withstanding) because anyone else probably wouldn’t have been able to get away with it. Craig especially, who was not much of a people person at the best of times, knew that Kenny had a rough edged charm. A lot of it. Too much even. And it gave Craig a lot of grief but he preferred not to think about _that_ particular matter most of the time.

He tensed his jaw and sighed as though the question pained him to answer.

“Fuck off Kenny.”

Kenny laughed, and Clyde who for some ungodly reason always encouraged him, smirked like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard in his life. Fucking Clyde.

Craig realised then, quite arbitrarily, that he didn’t actually like his friends all that much.

How grim. 

“Anyways. That means I might not be able to hang out so much over summer.”

“That’s okay, we all have stuff to do ourselves. I think my family is going to France again.”

Token jiggled the straw in his banana berry smoothie and everyone at the table rolled their eyes.

“He’s lying.” Kenny leant on the table with his elbows, and Craig saw Clyde shifting uncomfortably out of the corner of his eye. “Not about France, but about the rest of us doing shit. Not everyone can afford to go to _France_.”

“Speak for yourself. I have stuff I could be doing.”

“Shut up Clyde.” The older Clyde got, and the more he tried to pass himself off as a ladies man and general jock, the less tolerance Craig had for the sound of his gormless voice. “You killed your mom.”

“Harsh dude.” Token scrunched his face when Clyde’s fell. Kenny blew a soft huff of air out his nose and resumed his napkin folding.

“Whatever.”

This day wasn’t going too well. Not worth getting up before midday for anyway. The mall was nothing special, but he had an unfortunate tendency to forget this when he lay in his bedroom alone and bored stupid, and the idea of what a mall should be, what it represents rather than the actuality of the fact, rose almost mystically to the surface of his mind. The people, with their  private business and bratty little children in tow. The fluorescent lights which glowed white and illuminated corridors enlivened by plastic bushes in planter boxes. Ah yes, the mall. An excellent place to be if you have money. Or failing that, an erection with a decent attention span. There was no denying that as far as places to find fresh female attention go, the food court at the South Park mall complex was the be all and end all. Unfortunately for Craig, he had already developed a system appropriate to dealing with his dick, and that system did not include gambling with his pride in an effort to secure a date and a blow for that weekend coming.

He barely even noticed the girls who came and went here, most of them from the all girls high school just outside the East Park city limits. But again, this was something he always forgot- they seemed so promising in theory but to actually see them milling around Sephora or the apple store? Meh. He just couldn’t be bothered.

He pulled his cellphone out of his jeans, found he had no messages (unsurprising) and tried to change the subject.

“Hey Token, are you still seeing Bebe?”

“No, we broke up like… three months ago? Great paying attention.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

Craig hadn’t been paying attention because Craig didn’t particularly care. The complications of romance were something he neither understood nor cared to understand, and of all the persons in their group Kenny was probably the one who had the best ideas about engaging with the opposite sex. Frankly, it was difficult for Craig to imagine a fulfilling emotional engagement with a girl. Frankly, it was all too easy to poke the remains of his nachos around the plate in front of him and know that later that night he would go home and watch a video with a title like ‘Backdoor bi-fuck’ or ‘Horny college grad gets slammed by hung jock’ with a clear conscience because at least he wasn’t failing time and time again to find gratification in faking a romantic attraction.

Token must have made his way through most of the girls in their grade by now, with no more success than Craig when it came to getting with the love of his life, and Craig thought that perhaps there was some benefit in being physically plain. It meant that usually girls didn’t bother paying him that much attention, and that he was free to alternate between masturbating and thinking private thoughts about certain people he would _consider_ having an emotional relationship with, but not sacrifice any effort to attain.

Which made the thing Clyde said next particularly startling.

“Oh yeah that reminds me. Bebe asked me for your cellphone number the other day.” He furrowed his brow and looked at Craig as though this fact was bothering him slightly. “Craig I mean.”

“… Me?” Craig would have raised his eyebrows, if having a deadpan expression at all times wasn’t pretty much his only modus operandi. Token choked on his milkshake, and Kenny sighed.

“What are you doing texting Bebe?!” Token demanded, and Craig observed that apparently he was still a little sore from their breakup.

“Yeah Clyde. Still haven’t let it go?” Kenny, meanwhile, had been teasing Clyde for his obsession with their classmate for the last eight months. His comment made Clyde flush, but he declined to react just in case it made Token angrier than he already was. Craig didn’t know why he looked so goddamned pissed, considering he had probably been the one who dumped her ass in the first place. That was usually how Tokens relationships played out.

“Yeah. You. That’s what I said too.”

“Well did you give it to her?”

“No. I told her I’d ask you first.”

“… Yeah. Good.”

God, what on earth did a girl like _Bebe_ want with him? Bebe Stevens was easily the queen bitch of the sophomore scene last year. Smart and pretty, voted most likely to marry Kyle Broflovski and become one half of the next power couple USA, Craig couldn’t even remember the last time the two of them had even had a conversation and honestly that was the way he preferred it. Girls like her made him feel cold and subject to harsh judgement. He tried not to be around them mostly out of self defence, and he couldn’t help it that in those unfortunate moments he failed he always came off as a jerk when he talked to them. He never had any hope of being what they wanted him to, and so it was better he figured to simply steer clear and look disinterested. And even though he could feel colour rising at the back of his neck just _thinking_ about the way Bebe’s breasts looked in the pretty red cardigans she always wore, and even though he couldn’t help but wonder if it was finally his turn to ride those thick girly thighs, he maintained this as best he could when he said ‘Don’t give it to her.”

Kenny thumped him hard on the shoulder and hissed.

“Dude! What?!”

“What what? Why would I want Bebe to have my number?”

Kenny looked at him like he was completely insane. At least, that’s what Craig thought. It was hard to tell because even three parkas on from his original egg yolk orange ensemble he still insisted on wearing his hood up indoors on a summer day. Sometimes, it was possible to believe that he was nothing more than a pair of almond shaped blue eyes and freckles.

“Because she’ll _fuck you_.”

“No she wont!”  This conversation really seemed to be working Token up. “And take off your hood by the way. You’re embarrassing to be with sometimes.”

Without missing a beat Kenny threw his hood back, and a finely featured blonde boy became fully realised in front of them. His enthusiasm for the topic was evident in the way he spoke with his entire face, and it was a nice face to look at. Better than Craig’s or Clyde’s by fair. Craig looked down at his plate of leftovers and grit his teeth together tightly.

“Shut up Token. She _will_. Cartman said Bebe likes to fuck, and anyone willing to let that fat lump of shit put it in her must be game for anything. You’re a shoe in.”

“Shut _up_ Kenny.”

“Yeah Kenny, shut up.”

He must have been hitting more than a few nerves to have Token and Clyde ganging up on him, considering the two of them rarely agreed on anything at all.

“Guys, maybe we should stop talking about this.” Craig sat up straight and pushed his shoulder back. His neck clicked loudly, and that made Kenny screw up his nose in discomfort. The guy had a problem with abnormal bodily noises. Why that was, Craig couldn’t even begin to guess.

“… Don’t do that.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Clyde narrowed his eyes at Kenny across the table. Token scowled, and returned his attention to his beverage.

 

…

 

It was two more days of sleeping late and masturbation before Craig heard back from the proprietors at Tweek Bros. Coffee shop, and for a few glorious hours the evening before he had thought he was off the hook entirely. His father hadn’t asked him about his application progress, and there had been no missed messages or calls to his cell phone when he woke up at some time in the early afternoon.  Mister Tweak didn’t want him, his summer spent moping around his bedroom playing crappy computer games was secure and all in all things were looking so much better than they had that morning at the mall two days previously.

Of course, being called up at eleven forty eight pm Thursday put a damper on his mood and his game of SimTower, ad he answered his phone with a burning impatience, not even looking away from his laptop to check the ID for who was calling.

“What? You know its like, midnight, right?”

And for a few seconds after he answered, there was nothing but silence on the other end of the line.

“… Its me,” The person said, and Craig’s eyebrows scrunched because how the hell should he know who ‘Me’ is?  Was it Kenny? The voice was too fragile for Kenny, all glassy and kind of tense. It definitely wasn’t Clyde, and it sure as _hell_ wasn’t any female voice he had ever heard in his life. So at least he knew that so far Clyde hadn’t given Bebe his number.

“Okay. So what do you want?”

“Well, dad asked me to call you and ask if you wanted to come in tomorrow morning some time and start a shift. I should have called earlier but I wasn’t sure if you gave me the right number or if I was just going to end up calling Eric Cartman or something and embarrassing myself.”

Oh god. It was Tweek. Of course it was fucking Tweek. That was what he got for getting his hopes up. Craig groaned and paused his game, all of his aspirations dissolving suddenly like a wisp of smoke in the wind.

“Ugh, do I have to?” he rubbed his forehead, and suddenly noticed he was very tired. Bizarre considering he had slept in until two pm that afternoon. “What time does he want me to come in?”

“Nine am. But you should probably come in a bit earlier so you can help me sanitise everything. I don’t like the idea of working somewhere infested with germs.”

“Of course you don’t.” He breathed it, hating his father and kicking himself for actually giving his contact details and his promise of manual labour to these people.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. I didn’t say anything.” Craig sighed and pushed the lid of his laptop closed. “Can I just come in and nine? I don’t give a shit about germs. Do I have to wear a uniform or anything?”

“Pants, covered shoes, and a dark top. Black is best.”

“Great. Fucking great.”

Craig didn’t have anything black that wasn’t in his dirty laundry basket and in need of a wash. If he was going to have to wear something black, then he was going to need to wear half a can of body spray as well. For fucks sake! Couldn’t Tweek have called him earlier in the evening? When he still had time to do laundry?

“… So I will see you at nine then?”

“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

He hung up the phone before Tweek could respond, and he didn’t stop to think that on the other end Tweek was sitting on the edge of his bed with white knuckled fists gripping his sheets. The pressure to make a phonecall was something Craig never really felt.

He tossed his cell phone onto his lampstand and groaned again, but the noise turned into a long loud sound of complaint and frustration. Through the wall, his sister screamed at him

“Shut _up_ Craig I’m trying to go to sleep!”

Her shrill, awful voice probably woke up the whole street.

 


	3. Awkward conversations with slightly racist taxi drivers at three am on a Sunday morning.

 

“Good morning.”

Craig hadn’t slept very well and if he was going to be honest he felt like total shit, but at least he knew when he walked through the coffee shop doors and spotted Tweek scrubbing the tables down with an obsessive ferocity that he didn’t feel anywhere near as bad as Tweek looked.

He yelped like a kicked dog when the door swung shut in Craig’s wake, and the sloppy cloth he had been using to clean invisible marks off the table dropped onto the floor with a loud splat.

“Jesus Christ oh man!” he exclaimed. “You gave me such a fright!”

“Its nine o’clock.” Craig told him, and for some reason hearing him exclaim like that brought back memories of childhood games and afternoons spent in school assembly side by side. It was kind of funny, how things like social hierarchy could put so much distance between two people. He never really felt any sort of disdain or animosity toward Tweek then, so what was different now?

Did it matter?

“Oh, it is too. Sorry, I wasn’t watching the clock. I’ve been here all morning cleaning and re-writing the menu.”

Craig looked at the gleaming floors and at the large blackboard which boasted the menu. Doing so brought a certain amount of pleasant surprise, because the completed board looked like something that a business might pay a professional to put together. Fancy lettering completely unlike Tweek’s handwriting and stylish spirals of black and white drew the eye and held it there unabashedly. Not a bad job, for a head case. Not a bad job for someone entirely _compos mentis_ either. It looked pretty fucking good.

“How often do you do that?”

“Every week or so usually. Dad changes the menu a lot and I redraw it every time. Nn...” He scratched the back of his neck and Craig noticed that he had a band-aid on the side of his chin. He decided not to ask about it.

“Right… so what am I supposed to be doing?”

“You need an apron.” Tweek told him, leaving the soapy cloth on the floor and a large puddle of what smelt like bleach and household cleaner in the middle of the table as he strode in the direction of the counter. “And I’m going to show you how to use the coffee machine. But don’t break it because otherwise dad will make me pay for it.”

Craig wasn’t sure if he should force a laugh, because as a joke the comment was terribly forced and not at all funny. But when Tweek rounded the counter and Craig once again could see his expression it became clear that he was in fact being quite serious. Or at least, he believed he was.

An uncomfortable lump rose at the back of Craig’s throat.

“Here.” The apron Tweek gave him was navy blue and had a large Tweek Bros logo on the front. “Put it on and tie it, but don’t strangle yourself and don’t leave the ties loose because they might catch in the grinder and pull you in with them.”

“Oh great. Fantastic. Thanks a lot.” Craig pulled the apron over his head and tied it in much the same way any normal person would tie an apron, but he did take care to tuck the ties sloppily into the back of his pants. “What would happen if… you know. That happened.”

“You’ll probably die. Maybe. I don’t know it’s never happened before.”

“I see.”

Tweek gave him a tight lipped smile and pointed hesitantly to the hat perched on top of his head.

“I’m really sorry, but uh… I can’t let you wear that.”

Almost instantaneously, like it was a reaction spurred by physiological reflex rather than psychological objection, Craig’s hand flew to the crown of his head and the floppy yellow pom pom on top of his chullo hat.

“What? My hat?”

“Uh huh.” Tweek gnawed his bottom lip and placed his hands on the counter. Craig glanced at his fingers, noted that they were long and bony, and thought that this gesture must be some kind of grounding thing. Like when he was ten and he used to ball his fists tightly, or pull on his hair, or grip the legs of his desk with white knuckles whenever he was called on to answer a question in class. “Sorry. Dads policy.”

“But… why?”

His shoulders pulled into a great sloppy shrug.

“Not sure. Just take it off, you can put it somewhere safe until you finish the shift?”

Ugh. Craig felt his stomach sink. He _hated_ going around in public without his hat on. Hatless it was easy to see his ugly dark hair, which troublingly enough had started to grey in threads when he was only fourteen and now boasted what could be called at _least_ a dusting of glimmering silver around his ears and nape.

Okay, it was more like he had probably three grey hairs in total. But he was fairly self conscious about him and when he reluctantly pulled his hat off, he very much expected Tweek to comment.

He did not.

Craig crammed his hat into the back pocket of his jeans and tried to look slightly less uncomfortable than he actually was.

“Okay so what else?’

“Uhm…” Tweek looked worried for a moment, his flustered demeanour giving way to a more sombre look of concern, and his eyes fluttered as he tried to remember what it was he was supposed to do next. “Well, I guess you can go and put the daily specials sign just outside the door? And if you want, after that… come over by me and I can teach you how to use the till machine.”

 

…

 

Tweek wasn’t actually that bad of a teacher. Craig had expected a morning of fumbling and Tweek freaking out, but apparently having done this for five years already Tweek had a pretty good grasp of the processes involved in making and serving coffee to customers. So long as Craig didn’t ask any sideways questions, (like ‘how many old women hit on you in an average week’, or  ‘what is the longest time I can spend in the bathroom without you know… looking suspicious’) he received a fairly brisk and professional explanation of the machinery and the basic tasks he could perform using it, and despite an unfortunate jitter in his hands and a twitch centred mostly on dragging his fingers through his hair, Tweek actually seemed kind of normal as he talked. Some of his intonation, however, was a little bit unsettling: Craig hoped he would stop saying things as though they were a question after a while. Seemingly arbitrary things, like ‘the milk is in the fridge’ or ‘make sure to wash the cream nozzle when you are done squirting it’. It was almost as though he was asking for approval to make these statements, and as the new kid on the block Craig was very hardly in a position to give it. He decided against saying anything though, in case it made it worse.

They made thirty seven sales before ten thirty that morning, mostly to men in suits on their way to work, and at eleven when business picked up again Craig was hardly away from the till, taking money and passing Tweek receipts with names and orders filled out on the back side in blue marker pen.

“Craig, make sure you put the decimal point through the till properly or the money won’t balance at the end of the day.”

“Right… sorry.” Craig poked the decimal point key, which Tweek had told him at least twice had a tendency to either stick or go off erratically, before raising his head to take the next order in line.

“Hey can I take an order?”

The froth making machine thing that Craig didn’t know the name of hissed as Tweek shot a silver flask of milk with hot pressurised air. The woman standing in front of the counter was elderly and smiling, and apparently this was the average client here at Tweek Bros coffee - Desiccated and amiable with a touch of forgetfulness.

“My, my,” She said as greeting. “I’d like a plain black coffee please, extra hot.”

“What size?”

“Regular.”

Craig entered the order, tore off the printout, and scribbled this information hurriedly on the back side.

“And your name?”

“Dorothy. Say, are you new here? Such a handsome young boy first thing on a Monday morning…”

Well, so far the answer to the hitting on question was hovering around once. But it was only four hours into his first shift.

“I… this is my first shift actually.”

He jumped when the order he was holding was snatched out of his hand.

“Don’t chat with the customers.” Tweek murmured, not meeting his eye. “It’s dangerous.”

He did not elaborate on this, setting the slip on the bench next to him and set about grinding the beans to make the order.

Craig’s brow knitted in bewilderment. The woman he was serving certainly looked like no threat he had ever encountered. He put through the payment quickly and moved on to the next customer.

By one in the afternoon, business lulled again, and realising that he had probably _never_ spent this much time on his feet Craig couldn’t help but slump over the till like Tweek had been the first day he had come in and applied for his job. His feet were sore and his eyelids heavy. And the weird music playing from Tweek’s iPod made his head hurt. There was something horribly exhausting about having to deal with customers coming in and talking in a hundred different voices, ordering a hundred different things, and it was fortunate for Craig that the impatient looks and occasional rude comments didn’t bother him that much at all. In fact, he couldn’t care less, and so far customer service had delivered pretty much exactly what he had expected it would.

He hated it.

But not any more than he hated other necessary things, like school or haircuts or having to clean his hands when he’s finished jerking off.

“Here.”

He was startled when something hot was placed by his elbow, and upon investigation the hot thing proved to be a short paper cup of coffee, the steam coiling off the surface like little dragons.

“Huh? Who ordered this?”

“No one.” Tweek gave him a shy little smile and hooked a few stands of hair behind his ear. “I mean, it’s for you. If you want it. We can drink as much as we like.”

Well, that was a perk of sorts he supposed. Craig didn’t actually _like_ coffee, per say, but it was better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick so even though he thought about saying so a combination of why not and guilt induced by the way Tweek wouldn’t look him in the eye meant that in the end, he gave in.

He sighed and stood up straight, and picked up the small paper cup of coffee as though it wasn’t approximately five million degrees Fahrenheit at least. Tweek watched him do it, with those weird eyes of his, and he noted that the shallow frown lines on his brow softened when Craig brought the cup to his lip and sipped it tersely.

It burned like a million suns on the tip of his tongue, and it wasn’t until he swallowed that a very dark thought occurred to him – what if Tweek had done something to it while he had been distracted?

His workmate turned away, and set about brewing himself a massively large cup of Americano. Craig noticed that he had his bangs pinned back, but the little black clips hadn’t done all that much in the sense they were intended. Uneasy, he set his drink back down and glanced around the shop. There were three customers. An elderly women who had ordered a teabag and hot water, and a pair of Goth kids Craig recognised from somewhere but he couldn’t for the life of him think of their names. He leant his hip against the counter and folded his arms.

“… So this is an average day?” he asked, eyes darting to the clock and hoping in the back of his mind that he would be allowed to leave soon. Tweek hadn’t actually told him how long he would be here for, and he had estimated he would be home by at latest three. Was this standard procedure? Craig wasn’t sure. The whole affair had been quite casual so far, there hadn’t even been any mention of bank account details or pay checks yet and he would have thought that would be one of the first things addressed upon starting the course of his employment. How was he supposed to get reimbursed for his time and efforts? Tips had been skinny all morning and with a sinking feeling in his stomach it occurred to him that perhaps his training would be unpaid. Was he standing here all morning for nothing? Should he ask, or would that kind of enquiry only serve to work Tweek into a nervous frenzy? He had been so normal all morning, and Craig didn’t want to find himself lulled into a false sense of security about his stability and accidentally set him off by asking troublesome questions. He was already second guessing why it was the two of them had stopped being friends in the first place, and that was concerning. It was because Tweek had become unhinged right? It wasn’t anything to do with Craig just kind of… going along with the crowd?

“… Yeah.” Tweek nodded, eyes fixed on the coffee machine he was working. His face in profile looked like any teenaged boys face. Perfectly usual except for the shadows under his eyes. “Mostly. But you won’t be working days so it uh… doesn’t really matter. Dad and Mom work during the day normally. You have to do night shift. With me.”

Craig felt his eyebrows creeping upward despite his efforts to retain a neutral expression.

“So why am I here right now?”

“’Cause dad. He wanted you to come in so he could talk to you. He won’t be here until four. Mm.”

Craig groaned and Tweek jumped. He almost looked a little taken aback.

“I have to wait until _four_?”

“Uh, well, it’s usually quiet from now until four so it’s not too bad…”

“Ugh.” Craig had another mouthful of coffee. The drink was so bitter that he barely even noticed how hot it was. Or vice versa. Quiet or not, the fact remained that he was supposed to stick around here for another _three hours at least_ , and when this job wasn’t fast paced and annoying Craig had a sneaking suspicion it was going to be mind numbingly boring. Tweek was hardly good conversation, and his presence meant that Craig would only spend hours wondering what was even going on in that frazzled little head. “God, how do you even _work_ this job? It’s exhausting. And no offence but don’t you get… you know. Nervous dealing with all the customers?”

Tweek’s expression shifted to one of surprise, most likely because he hadn’t expected that Craig would even bring that up so directly. Craig was shocked to hear it come out of his mouth as well- no one at school ever mentioned Tweek’s issues to his face. Subjects like that were usually saved for mockery or chatter behind his back, and it was an issue of contrition among their peers whether or not Tweek even realised that everyone knew he was batshit insane. Craig very nearly regretted how easily it just slipped out.

Please don’t let him get angry.

“Uh, honestly?” he finished making his coffee, and it was obvious when he picked it up that his hands were tremoring more than Craig had ever seen them. His cheeks were pink, but besides that he didn’t seem any different than if Craig had asked him about the weather. “It kills me, man. Every day I get up and I think today’s the day I loose my shit. But here I am, I guess.”

He almost spilt his drink down his front when he took a mouthful.

Craig couldn’t tell if he was being serious. He decided that it was easier not to reply, because he didn’t really know what to say.

 

…

 

It would have been easier to concentrate on what Mister Tweek was saying to him if his cell phone wasn’t vibrating in his back pocket.

Also, Richard Tweek was kind of difficult to listen to at the best of times – his voice was much too watery and gentle, like he was narrating one of those shitty public access TV ads his entire life, and he seemed very wishy-washy in regards to actually giving Craig a guarantee of wages. Getting him to settle on nine fifty an hour was hard enough, and tips seemed to be right out, but Craig had a sneaking suspicion that tips were in fact the only reimbursement Tweek received for his work in the store, so he decided he might as well let that go.

“Really though,” Mister Tweak told him softly, as they lingered behind the counter and studied the clientele lining up for their afternoon fix of beans, “I just needed someone to come in a few evenings a week and keep him company. He’s not very good at making friends.”

He gestured discreetly to his son, and Craig felt a strange twinge of guilt in his belly. Tweek looked okay when he was working. His voice didn’t waiver and he didn’t make any obvious mistakes. It was strange to see him in this environment actually, keeping it together after hearing him confess to being a mess, and it was interesting to compare him to the Tweek who shuffled down the corridors as though he suspected everyone around him was thinking about doing him in. All the same, Craig wasn’t sure he was up to putting any effort into befriending him. Babysitting? He could do that. Friends? No way. Admittedly, looking after Tweek wasn’t the job he had anticipated but he knew when he walked into this place that he would be getting something slightly less than usual, so deal with it he would. He kept thinking about that computer of his. That one he really really needed real bad. As soon as he had it, he decided in that moment, he would quit, and he would never have to talk to these people again.

“Right…” he pulled his phone out and rubbed his thumb over the back, hoping Mister Tweak would get the message and send him home to answer it soon. It was probably only Clyde or something, but all the same he was itching to leave, and he didn’t miss the way that his employers eyes darted down briefly when he extracted it, and a slight expression of distaste passed over his face.

“… Did Tweek tell you the hours you would be working?” he asked.

Craig went to nod, but hesitated.

“No, not yet. He mentioned something…”

“Ten through six, Wednesday through Saturday.”

Crags jaw dropped obviously.

_“At night?”_

Mister Tweek nodded seriously.

“Yes. You start tomorrow. If you don’t want the job, let me know before lunchtime.” He sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “But I do hope that you join our family here at Tweek Bros coffee. Nothing beats the rich dark roast of companionship, and there is nothing quite as satisfying as the feeling of serving up quality beverages to quality customers.”

Craig rolled his eyes.

“I’m sure.”

What he wasn’t so sure of though, now he knew the hours he was expected to work, was whether or not he even wanted to stay on here at all. Ten through six?! Even for nine dollars fifty and hour, that seemed ridiculous. Why did the coffee shop even have to stay open all night? Craig had known vaguely that Tweek bros was twenty four hours, but he didn’t imagine all that many people would come into the store at two am to get coffee. Did Mister Tweek _really_ need him to work overnights? Did he _really_?

He grabbed his hat from the spot Tweek had stashed it under the counter, and after pulling off his apron made his way home.

 

…

 

The messages were from an unknown number.

Well, it said unknown, but Craig knew who it was the moment he opened and read the SMS because there was only one person who punctuated her sentences with that many stupid iPhone emoticons.

_Hi Craig! I got your number off Kenny, I hope you don’t mind._

Craig sat at the kitchen table and stared at his phone, as though if he stared long enough the appropriate response would just appear there in the reply box ready to send. He had to read the message two of three times before it really sunk in, and it wasn’t until the fourth time he read it that he saw it wasn’t Clyde or Token who had given her his contact information at all. It was Kenny. And besides feeling horribly betrayed and ever so slightly flustered in his stomach Craig felt an awful lot like he was going to kill him. Seriously. The guy was fucking _dead_. Now what was he supposed to do? He hadn’t talked to girls since he was thirteen, and up until that point he hadn’t been that flash at it anyway. What did she want? Was this some kind of a joke or something?

For some reason he felt vaguely like Tweek would understand this feeling, which was a strange kind of a thought to have but he didn’t really notice in the face of his dilemma.

He was just about to reply to his text, a brief ‘hi’, when his dad walked in and noticed him sitting there, and he regretted not having taken himself upstairs and cloistering himself up in his room.

“Job going okay?” he grunted. Craig shrugged.

“I’m having seconds thoughts,” he said without thinking. “They want me to work ten to six in the morning.”

His father froze in place by the cupboard, the box of saltine crackers he had just extracted clamped tightly in his hand.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Second thoughts? There’s nothing wrong with those hours. You sleep in the daytime anyway.”

“Ugh, yeah whatever.” Craig stood up and kicked his chair back in place under the table. “Look, I’ll worry about it later, okay? I have more important things to deal with.”

He made his way upstairs, to spend the rest of the evening deliberating over what the hell he is supposed to say to Bebe. Now he was considering it further, a simple ‘hi’ just wasn’t going to be okay.


	4. A handjob in the back of the classroom on a Friday afternoon

It was ten o’clock pm exactly. Craig was checking his skin in the Tweek Bros bathroom mirror when Tweek interrupted him, large mop bucket and bottle of sugar soap in hand.

“Hey man. So uh, you wanna help me clean the floors?”

“There’s only one mop.” Craig told him. “Besides, I don’t start for another thirty seconds.”

“I can wait.”

Tweek gave him the measured little smile that was quickly becoming idiosyncratic, and Craig noticed for the first time that he had never seen Tweek smile in a way that touched his eyes. At least not since they had started high school anyway.

Craig felt a troubled prickling on the back of his neck, but he sighed as though he did not and pulled his hat unenthusiastically off his head.

“Fine. Where’s my mop.”

“Here. Use this. I’ll just use a cloth.”

Unfortunately, cleaning the floor was the most interesting thing that happened before midnight that very first night on shift.

The night was cold and overcast, and Craig had suspected it might rain before dawn broke and he finally got to go home and crawl into bed. Fortunately, the coffee shop was super toasty and Mister Tweak had opted not for the unpleasant fluorescent lights of all night diners and corner stores but warm frosted bulbs which made the place kind of cosy. In a late night coffee shop kind of way. Standing sentinel behind the counter, picking his fingernails and wondering if he should make himself a coffee just to relieve his boredom, Craig paid low key attention to what Tweek did to pass the time. Cleaning things and seemingly mumbling to himself mostly, and sometimes when he thought Craig absorbed in his nail picking he would brace himself against the sink and flex his neck. As though he had knots or something in there giving him issues. His music plaid eerily in the background, but Craig was beginning to get used to it just like he was starting to get used to the way he moved around a lot. The streetlights outside the store window cast uneasy cones of light on the deserted streets, and he tried very hard to avoid looking out the window in case he saw something he didn’t care for.

Craig had never been a great fan of the dark. He had made a point in the past of concealing this, but he had in fact slept with a nightlight in his room until he was fourteen.

It was cool though. Seriously. He was way past that now and so long as he kept himself concentrated on the world inside the store, everything would be A-ok.

Fucking night shift though.

It was just. So. _Boring_.

At eleven fifty seven, he slapped his hand down on the counter and made Tweek swear loudly. The blender lid he was holding clattered to the floor.

“Are we likely to get _any_ customers tonight?” He asked, and he must have sounded pretty mad because Tweek grimaced and shook his head almost immediately.

“Sometimes on Fridays Stan and That Group come in and get drinks for a little while. And Saturdays drunk people on their way home from parties and bars…”

“It’s Thursday.” Craig told him, duly unimpressed by his answer. “You mean your dad _is_ actually paying me to stand here and do nothing all night?”

Tweek shrugged his shoulders, but it wasn’t really a shrug. More of an allusion to one. Tweek didn’t have the commitment to not knowing any more than he had commitment to knowing for sure.

“I, uh, I don’t know why he opens the shop at night. I really don’t think it’s a good idea either. I did tell him.”

Well. Mister Tweak hadn’t been lying. The only thing in his job description was babysitting this lost cause after all. Tweek averted his eyes as if he was afraid Craig was going to start claiming it was all his fault (which it was to some extent but Craig wasn’t going to make the effort to actually say that), and Craig turned his back to his company, looking out into the empty shop and heaving a mighty sigh.

“Can I use my phone?” he asked half-heartedly. “Or is that not allowed either?”

Craig was still sore about the loss of his hat.

“Mm. Sure.” Tweek told him. “Go for it. That’s what I usually do to pass the time.”

Craig still hadn’t made the effort to text Bebe Stevens back. 

 

…

 

 

He was very nearly falling asleep.

It was almost four am, and the ‘customers only’ sofa under the window was comfortable, the air conditioning creating a pleasant atmosphere most appropriate for sleep or relaxation. Possibly both. Tweek had shut off half the lights at around two to conserve power, and despite having drunk a coffee not half an hour prior Craig felt himself drifting in the space between wakefulness and sleep as he lay there, his head resting on the arm and his knees bent upwards comfortably. Tweek was busying himself on his cell phone, and he sat on the chair next to Craig with his knees tucked under him. He seemed almost frenzied, tapping at his cell phone screen like his very life depended on it, and after a while of watching this through bleary eyes Craig asked him.

“Dude. What the fuck are you doing?”

“Playing Tetris.” Came the timid answer. “I’m actually pretty good.”

Craig bet he was, if he spent his entire evenings at work playing, completely alone and energised by three tall cups of coffee.

“Oh.”

Craig’s eyes slipped closed and he heaved a deep sigh. His mind wandered to his bed, and to the warmth of his duvet and the comforting sounds of his guinea pigs snuffling around in their spotless cage. He could be there right now, in his room. Either asleep or gaming, it mattered not at all. What mattered was that he ought to be away from here, and the more he thought about it the more warm and dreamlike the scenery became. He almost could have believed he _was_ there, were it not for Tweek’s voice disturbing him and making his eyes snap open again in surprise.

“Hey, uh, Craig?”

“What?” Craig sat up and shook his head. He was starting to get a headache in the diamond between his eyes.

Tweek coughed softly and set his phone down.

“… Remind me why you’re here again?”

“I needed a job.” He answered plainly, as though that much should be obvious. “I told you that already.”

Tweek scrunched his face up and set his phone down on the arm of his chair.

“Sorry it’s not a good job.” He murmured. “I should’ve told you it’s not that great.”

Craig scoffed, reaching for one of the magazines on the table in front of them and casting a brief glance over the articles. So and so has just had a baby. Someone else has gained ten kilos. Craig gave approximately zero fucks, but he opened the magazine to falls fresh new colours and started to read. Apparently, peach lipstick would do wonders for his complexion. “S’okay.”

He checked his phone, observed there was still no reply, and heaved a sigh. Tweek’s eyes swung to his Samsung and he put two and two together easily.

“Waiting for a text?”

“Bebe. She text me yesterday but I didn’t know how to reply.”

He seemed surprised.

“Bebe? From school?”

“No. Bebe from Fight Club.” He didn’t want to go in depth with him about that kind of thing right now. He was bored, but he wasn’t so desperate as to start talking about his weird little social dilemmas. Particularly ones which weren’t even dilemmas, he had just gotten fucked over by someone he thought was a bro. God, every time he thought about Kenny giving her his number, filled with good intentions and a little too much testosterone for a guy his size, Craig’s head swum with frustration and shame and a few other odd feelings (specific to Kenny, unfortunately) that he couldn’t quite articulate clearly. Often he wished he and Kenny had a better or more communicative relationship – at least that way he would have been able to make it clear he didn’t want girls getting his number at random. Then he realised that he hadn’t even messaged Kenny a nice healthy fuck you for his efforts. He picked up his phone and set about sending one out immediately.

Tweek stared at him with startled eyes, and it reminded Craig a lot of  the way that Mojo froze up when there was a loud noise on the street outside his house so Craig couldn’t help feel a little guilty for snapping like that. Goddamnit. He sighed and flicked his eyes upward to give him a look.

“Just kidding. Yes Bebe from school. Kenny gave her my cell phone number even though I told him I wasn’t interested. Bebe is hot but shes not really my type.” He pressed send on Kenny’s message and screwed his nose up thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’m a very compatible person.”

“No.” Tweek said, his tone somewhat contemplative, and Craig snapped his head up in surprise.

“What?”

“I mean, sure! I mean, what no don’t be stupid I’m sure you’re… a great… guy?” his previous calmness evaporated like a drop of water on a hot pan, and in the aftermath he seemed flustered and annoyed at himself for letting his guard down. The shadows under his eyes looked deeper than usual, and his face looked drawn and washed out. “Fuck, I’m sorry that came out wrong. Oh man. Jesus Christ.”

And even though it seemed kind of mean, Craig really couldn’t help but laugh.

“Holy shit. You seem like any regular guy sometimes, but you say something wrong or weird just one time and you freak way out about it.”

“I can’t help it!” he flushed a vivid magenta colour and exclaimed quite shortly. Craig realised he may have touched a nerve. “I have some problems with socialising. I’m just trying to be normal!”

“… Whoa. Calm down. It’s okay I was just teasing you.” Craig’s eyes fixed on Tweek’s face, and he forced himself to look chill and genuine. The angry little roses on white cheeks were quite distracting. “Like I said, you come across really well a lot of the time. I mean… better than you did when we were younger.” He paused for a moment and Tweek glared at the arm of his chair with a surprising ferocity. Where should Craig even take the conversation from here? “Did you uh… go to a counsellor or something?”

“No. A hypnotist. Jesus Christ it was horrible. Sometimes I can still hear his voice in my head and it drives me _insane,_ man. I was mentally violated and my parents paid him to do it. And then they gave me pills so I’d stop complaining about it.”

“… Oh.”

Craig had been planning on congratulating him on his progress since fourth grade, but now he thought he may just hold his tongue. Tweek’s eyes shone with an almost manic light and he seemed _furious_ , but the next time he spoke it was with a clear, calm voice.

“Your phone is about to go off.” He said, returning his attention to his game.

Four seconds later, the vibrate alert went off, and Craig couldn’t help the goose pimples which moved in a cold wave down his spine. 

 

…

 

“An ordinary night then?” Craig asked, and Tweek nodded. The time was nearing five thirty, and for an hour there Craig had actually drifted to sleep, but now the sun was rising and Tweek had just set a hot mug of caramel latte in front of him so he supposed he could use a pick me up before heading out into the deserted streets and heading home.

“Sometimes I read books or bring my laptop in.” Tweek told him tersely. “If you don’t want to chat with me, you can do that tonight. I don’t mind.”

Craig sipped his drink, found it to actually be somewhat pleasing to taste, and shrugged in a non-comitial way which said ‘I’ll pretend to want to talk to you, but you bet your balls I’ll be bringing my computer to this shithole this evening to help me pass  the time.’ Tweek gave him another one of those cold smiles and sat down again in the armchair next to Craig’s sofa.

“Soon we have to go back behind the counter.”

“Hurrah.”

“Hurrah.” He pushed his hair back off his face and sighed. When his eyes fluttered closed, and maybe it was just the sunrise and the sleepless night playing tricks on him, Craig thought he looked almost hyper real. Luminescent and celestial.

Perhaps it was just the overwhelming strength of this first morning cup of coffee.

 

…

 

Texting Bebe became a little easier after a while.

Once he got into the rhythm of it, he found that he wasn’t actually that out of practice when it came to talking to girls because apparently, if you’ve talked to one you’ve talked to them all. He still remembered the kind of things his girlfriend of some four years ago used to like gossip about, and apparently Bebe was of similar ilk because when it came to the social affairs of those in their year group she just wanted to shut up not at all. Perhaps it was some strange girl mind game trying to get him primed, talking about who was dating who and who was getting the most romantic gifts from who this summer break, or maybe she really did think he gave a fuck. But whenever she text him ‘did you hear…’ he text back ‘no I didn’t, that’s really cool’ or some variation thereupon, and made himself a game to see how long it took for her to notice.

So far, he was winning. He had been talking to her like this for four hours by the time seven pm rolled around.

Craig was sitting at his desk grooming his guinea pigs and eating celery, which he didn’t really like but found to be a great excuse for the consumption of straight peanut butter from the jar and therefore, was probably worth it all in the end. Bebe was working her way up to asking whatever it was she wanted to ask, whether it was ‘wanna go out sometime’ or much more likely, Craig realised slowly and with a strange sense of hopefulness, ‘Could you please tell Clyde I’m sorry for me and to ask me out again please’ – something he would do in a eye blink if it was guaranteed to get her off his back. As he gave Mojo a light poke on the nose, he wondered if he was perhaps being unkind, or if there was something kind of wrong with him that he wasn’t really interested in Bebe’s advances. She was nice looking and blonde, successfully achieving the two most fundamental qualities Craig looked for in an appealing mate, and on top of that she was fairly smart too and all his friends definitely seemed to like her. Admittedly, it would make Craig feel kind of like he was betraying himself to be interested in a girl like her, not to mention a complete abandonment of that one embarrassing little crush he had been harbouring for what seemed like most of his teenaged life, but sometimes he just couldn’t believe that this was happening. Was he _really_ going to turn down a girl of that calibre if he was propositioned? Why? And from the back of his head that dark, concerning question which had troubled him since early puberty rose to the surface of his mind. Was he Gay or something? Was there something wrong with him, beyond just being a cold and unlikeable person? Was he going to have to tell his mother someday that she would never be a grandmother because he liked fantasizing about taking a dick up the ass to much, or explain to his father that he would rather be fucked by twenty muscular firemen than go down on that one elegant actress that Thomas Tucker always spoke of as being the pinnacle of feminine beauty?

Craig flushed, because he absolutely knew he wasn’t straight up unadulterated _gay_. He’d always liked girls and he’d always liked how they looked. But it was more complicated than just that. There were… other factors and he tried not to pay them too much attention most of the time. As the case was right now, he just didn’t like Bebe specifically. He discarded his celery, picking his pets up and moving to the bed so he could let them crawl on his legs and duvet while he distracted himself with cyberspace. He booted his shitty laptop and kicked off his shoes, but his cell phone was still in his pocket so he was still getting all those silly messages, and he was starting to get impatient. He was going to tell her he had to go shower or something, when a photo message successfully came through.

 _Went bra shopping today_.

Craig was so shocked. It took him a minute to figure out whether or not he was supposed to respond.

 _Oh_ , was all he managed, and he tried not to look at the photo while he typed it. _Nice_.

He put his phone under the pillow and ignored it for the rest of the night. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and thank you to everyone who has commented and left kudos so far - your comments are much appreciated and your support just as much so :D
> 
> For informative purposes, most of this story is already written and at this point i would like to hesitantly say that there will ultimately be about twenty chapters - the speed at which they are posted of course depends mostly on the speed at which i can edit. Alas that speed is, even at the best of times, indecently slow.


	5. Tara Gilesbie's 5th form Creative writing project.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers  
> And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees  
> In holy rattlesnakes that fell all around your feet

After all cleaning and maintenance  tasks were completed, and the obligatory and primarily instructional smalltalk with his companion preformed, Craig soon found that working at the coffee shop wasn’t _too_ bad with his shitty computer there by his side. He found the nights went faster mostly, and he thought that every-wary Tweek (who was still more than likely very suspicious of him and his motivations) probably preferred it this way too because it meant that Craig didn’t talk to him too much, but unfortunately there were times that his laptop was running so goddamned slowly he had nothing to do but sit around and gaze at the deserted shop and at the darkened windows, and at three am the faintest understanding of what it might be like to be the last man alive made itself known in the back of his mind. Sometimes, he wondered if he should try and talk to Tweek some more, but he was reluctant to inflict himself upon someone who had had the decency to resist forcing talk or socialisation thus far. Tweek was usually busy anyway- Most nights he had a book or his phone in his hand, and Craig observed quite by accident that  he seemed to be a fast reader.

Tweek made his way through about a novel a night. Craig was never close enough proximity to him to see what he read, but besides cleaning and rearranging himself in some private booth at the front of the store he did very little. Every half an hour or so he would make himself a new cup of coffee, and offer Craig one which he very rarely took, and while Craig waited for his slow ass excuse for a laptop to load saved files or the next section of a game map he busied himself by observing the ways that Tweek made himself comfortable in his body.

He didn’t shake like he used to. That was the first thing Craig noticed about him. The second was that he moved with a strange kind of gracefulness, and a hesitance that made him look almost exactly as high strung as he was.

The third thing Craig noticed was that Tweek could see him staring, and upon realising this he felt instantly embarrassed and tried to pass it off as the blank starting into space thing that most people did when particularly bored.

But Tweek wasn’t stupid.

It was the first Saturday night and there had been three sales while Craig had been cleaning the bathrooms, so apparently Tweek had been telling the truth about business picking up on the weekend after all. It was past 1am and Craig was several tasks into playing a game he had finished about fifty times for the fifty first time, but his screen had bugged out and he had to do a system restore so he was watching Tweek where he stood behind the counter, dog earring the pages of a skinny book with a red cover.

“… What do you want from me?” Tweek asked without looking up, and Craig wasn’t sure at first if he was talking to him or to himself.

“Huh?”

“What do you want from me? You keep staring and its freaking me out.” He looked up, and his brow was creased in a way which made Craig sure he thought he was thinking unkind things about him. “Is there something on my face?”

How stupid did he have to be to think Tweek wouldn’t notice his eyes drilling into him so shamelessly anyway?

“Oh! No, nothing. I was just…” he looked hurriedly down at the windows recovering screen and bit his lip. “I was just looking and you happened to kind of get in my way.”

Tweek blinked and pressed his lips together.

“I was sitting here first?”

“… Yeah. Well. Oh well.”

He would have kicked himself for how weak that argument was, but he didn’t want to make a scene.

Tweek coughed quietly, and returned his attention back to his book.

Oh god. Now Craig felt bad, because he didn’t doubt that Tweek was sitting there wondering f he was deformed or if he had a rampant booger or if Craig hated his guts and everything about him. Which wasn’t true but it must have been in his head because he was playing with his bangs and the way his hand hid his face made it obvious. God he was obvious. Or maybe he was just vulnerable, and Craig seemed to be unfortunately predisposed to like vulnerable creatures - the more he did it the more Craig wanted to excuse himself and leave to avoid further offense.

Goddamn. He had never felt bad about ostracising Tweek before, and treating him like a curiosity or object of fascination. What had changed? Maybe it was the fact that they were alone now, and he had time to think about it, and that little things like watching him nibble his fingernails and flick his hair off his face made him seem more… real. A multi dimensional human with many different feelings and thoughts inside.

Oh dear.  Now he was starting to feel kind of sick. 

He sighed and closed his laptop lid.

“Fuck okay, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. You’re just more interesting than this piece of shit, is all.”

Tweek turned a pale pink and dropped his hand.

“… What’s wrong with it?” he asked, and Craig shrugged.

“Just old. I’m using the money I make here to buy a new one. I need one which can plays games.”

“You still play computer games?”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

Tweek shook his head and closed his book. He lined it up very deliberately next to the cash register and brushed his hand over the countertop, as though dusting away invisible crumbs.

“No one to play with.” He said, smoothing down the front of his apron and looking at Craig sitting in the customer sofa. “I used to play minecraft and WOW. You know that.”

“Yeah I remember. You weren’t too bad.”

“I uh, have fast reactions.” He looked a little troubled, and Craig wondered if he could leave the conversation at that or if he should carry on. Tweek decided for him, by offering him a coffee.

“No thanks. I don’t actually like coffee that much.”

“Do you want a hot chocolate then?”

“… oh my god.” Craig had never thought to ask for such a thing. Which seemed ridiculous, because he was a sucker for sweet things and hot chocolate was one of the sweetest things on the whole menu. “I would be so happy.”

The corners of Tweek’s mouth turned up a little, and for a moment Craig thought it was a _real_ smile. Not just one of those forced ones he usually delivered.

“Give me a moment.  
He watched Tweek turn away, and start making them both hot beverages.

…

“So are you still friends with Clyde and Token?” Tweek sat opposite him with both hands clasped around his mug, and Craig nodded because he didn’t want to explain that really, they were just people he hung around with out of necessity.

“Sure. Kenny too. Jimmy and Timmy and anyone else who isn’t cool enough to hang out with Stan and Kyle.”

“Stan and Kyle are nice people though. I think. Well.” He frowned and his knuckles whitened as he tensed in thought. “Niceer than they were as kids.”

“You used to play with them. That’s right.”

“I didn’t really have much of a choice.” He tilted his head to the side, and Craig could see bruising which lay under the neckline of his pale green shirt. A beaded necklace rested on his collarbone, and his skin was so pale it was almost translucent. It was as though his complexion had never seen the sun. “I never had many close friends.”

“You had me and Clyde?”

“Yeah. That turned out great.”

His eyes rolled and Craig was actually somewhat taken aback. He didn’t want to accuse Tweek of going insane and wrecking everything though, because that seemed rude and likely to make him cry. Instead he contained his surprise and had a mouthful of hot chocolate. It was fucking incredible, and he couldn’t deny that Tweek sure knew how to brew a good drink.

“… You’re more sarcastic than I remember.” He remarked. Tweek arched his eyebrows a little and looked hard into Craig’s face.

“you’re about the same.”

He turned his face toward the darkened window, and gazed at the street as though he was watching something out there go about its daily business. Craig forced himself not to look as well, because he still wasn’t comfortable with that dimness outside, but considering even sensitive Tweek, who used to be startled if someone brushed against him in the lunch line (Craig would never forget the time Tweek stabbed Kenny in the shoulder with a fork for that exact reason) could look outside at the moon and the stars and the deserted street without feeling discomfort made him a little bit self-conscious about his late night fears.

“Hey, uh, Craig?” His eyes fluttered, and Craig studied his profile with a dry feeling at the back of his tongue because he had a nice profile and in the calm silence of the empty store this was intimidating. His jaw was well balanced and smooth, and his nose was just big enough to have character but not big enough to be ugly or disproportionate to the rest of him, and when he talked his lips moved slowly and clearly so his diction was well measured and gentle. “Can I ask you something?”

“You just did. Something else you mean?”

“Mm.” he nodded and looked back to the boy sitting opposite him. Craig watched him as he worried his lip, and clutched his mug just a little tighter in his hands.

“Sure.” It was a suspicious proposition, but Craig thought he may as well see where this was going.

“… Did I do something?”

It took a moment to figure out what he actually meant. When he looked obviously puzzled, Tweek turned a florid red and tried to salvage the question by rephrasing it. “Like… was there something that happened which made you hate me? Or was it just something which kind of just… ugh. You know?” he made eyes that pleaded for Craig to finish the question, and Craig felt the atmosphere thicken uncomfortably because wow, way to put him on the spot. He had never thought Tweek would want to call him out on something like this, but maybe he should have been a little bit more logical. He probably would want to know… it wasn’t like he or anyone had given the guy an explanation. They just kind of… stopped talking.

“I never hated you.” Craig started carefully, “It was something that just faded out. I think we just… had different interests?”

Tweek frowned and placed his mug squarely in front of him on the table.

“We did?”

“Sure. I liked videogames and puberty, you liked sniffing paint and accusing strangers of stealing your thoughts.”

“… Oh. Right.” He looked a little put out by this, as though he hadn’t realised there was a difference but also like he knew Craig was right and arguing would be an exercise in futility and pride. “Jesus… oh man that’s grim.”

“It happens.”

“Yeah but I never…” he let his sentence trail away and sighed heavily. “I dunno. For so long, I never felt like you or anyone else treated me different to how you treated each other. And then one day suddenly I was the weird kid even though I was exactly the same.” His hands disappeared under the table, and Craig wondered if he was sitting on them, to stop him from picking at his nails or scratching the table. His mug was empty, and leaving a ring on the freshly cleaned surface. “It was the scariest thing, man. You really start questioning who you think you are. Maybe you aren’t yourself any more, or maybe everyone else has changed, and I don’t know why I’m telling you this I don’t even like you.” He looked down at the table and Craig felt another small twinge of offence even though really, he shouldn’t care.

“Maybe you’re going crazy, being here so many nights alone.”

Tweek’s eyes darted up, and he narrowed them just a tiny bit.

“…Yeah. Maybe I’m going crazy. Just a little bit.”

…

It was a lazy afternoon Craig found himself browsing facebook, and although he had started off on Bebe’s page reading through her interests, looking at how that body of hers looked in various clothes and comparing it to the way it looked in underwear, he couldn’t resist the urge to drift sideways and into the pages of people he wasn’t allowed to stare at for extended periods of time in his everyday life

Quite unsurprisingly, the number one person in that category was Tweek, and mush to Craig’s delight it seemed that the two of them had never broken off their facebook friendship- Tweek had complete privacy on his page and of all his friends, Craig had been the only one who had maintained their link for the purposes of drunken page surfing with his buddies. He hadn’t really thought about this before now, but the satisfaction that came from clicking on his name in the search engine and bringing up a wealth of personal information about him was immense.

He started with Tweek’s basics, found that he already knew his birth date, address and relationship status, and made to go through his interests and TV shows instead.

Apparently, Tweek had never found any reason to update either of these things. Nor had he updated his education experience. It still said he attended Denver Willowback House, the asylum place where he had probably been hypnotised and treated for many things including an unintended drug habit, and his friends list seemed to be cluttered with four hundred nurses and fellow patients he had met there over the span of however many months he had been gone. The only thing that had updated regularly were his statuses (all of them nonsensical: ‘I drink two mugs of coffee, there is only milk and sugar in my cup’) and his profile pictures. Fortunately, he wasn’t the sort of person to have anything other than a picture of himself as his icon, and most of his images were ones taken by other people at events like ‘family reunion’ and ‘two for pone coffee day @ TBC’. It was suffice to say that in most, he looked like a bunny under headlights, and it would have been cute if he wasn’t so lanky and obviously uncomfortable in every single situation. There wasn’t one photo in which he wasn’t wide eyed and surprised looking, and nor was there one in which he was smiling, and even sandwiched between aunties and next to doting customers he seemed out of place and out of step – he was like another species, and a deeply fascinating one at that.

Despite it all, Craig couldn’t help but notice that he was really frustratingly handsome. Particularly in his family Christmas photos, where he wore his hair tied back into a stubby ponytail.

God, why could Craig not excise him from his mind?

He forced himself to click on kenos page instead, and as usual it was cluttered with selfies and unflattering drunk shots, but Kenny was photogenic anyway so it didn’t much matter if he was posing with Kyle or if Stan was holding his hair back while he vomited in  the gutter. He was still Kenny, and he was still gorgeous, and Craig felt a cramp of envy in his stomach as he scrolled down his page and saw that so many girls, including Bebe, had left comments on his page thanking him. Flattering him. Inviting him to stop by their house and say hi.

Say hi with his dick.

Craig groaned and slammed his laptop shut, before oozing off his desk chair and collapsing face down into the pillow on his bed. He could hear music playing through the wall, and it was that one direction album Craig hated but knew most of the words to so he figured that his sister probably had friends over or something. He wished he could just invite a friend over for once, and sit around doing nothing besides listen to music, but he didn’t have any friends that were close enough to warrant this kind of behaviour. 

He realised, with his mouth blocked by pillow and his head spinning with the smell of his shampoo, that he was actually very lonely, an he knew that he would in all likelihood spend the rest of the evening trying to fill the gap this feeling left in him with game rage and diet soda.

It was no great life, but it was his own.

 


	6. The half moons on your arm from where he grabbed you way too hard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I think about all the fanfiction ive written and Im like wow... imagine how productive i would be if i studied as much as i write, but I guess it cant be that bad because I am still here and im not failing classes so that’s just a little fact for you all about myself.

“No no, oh Jesus dude you’ve fucked it.”

Tweek’s hands hovered over his in panic while Craig held the milk jug under the steamer, and he failed to see what the big deal was because as far as he was concerned there was no such thing as scalding milk but what did he know; he apparently lacked the motor skills necessary to rotate the pitcher and create satisfactory foam anyway.

Cold fingers touched his briefly and indicated that he should take the steaming wand out of the hot milk and put the jug on the sink with the other four, and Craig couldn’t help but be mad about the whole ordeal because he could already use the till, grind the coffee and produce the molassesy black ooze which seemed to be the fundamental ingredient in all coffee beverages with the machines and tools provided – why did he need to know how to heat milk as well?

“This is too hard.” He snapped, and Tweek raked his hands through his hair in exasperation. “I’m never going to need to make a coffee anyway.”

“Oh come on, what else are we supposed to do? Dad will kill me if I don’t teach you how to do it properly. Jesus, this is so much _pressure_.”

He looked so distressed Craig almost felt bad for being frustrated about it. He groaned and shoved his hands into his pockets, as Tweek fumbled around the counter looking for the wand cleaning cloth.

“Can we give the coffee lessons a miss for the day? I kind of want to go play my game.”

“I thought your computer was broken.”

“I’m an optimist.”

Tweek shot him a look that said he wasn’t sure if he was joking or not. In the end, his searching fingers found the edge of the cloth sticking out from beside the coffee menu cards and he sighed heavily, wiping the steaming wand and then tossing the cloth straight into the sink.

“Whatever. I don’t mind. Do you want me to make you a drink or something? We have a new tea this week its kind of…” he pulled a face. “Like dried leaves.”

Not a tea fan apparently. Craig shrugged and told him he would have whatever he was given.

His game however, just wasn’t very interesting.

The tea was actually quite nice, not at all like the bland and dusty leaves Tweek had promised, and as Craig sipped it he made a mental not never to admit to his friends that he enjoyed the experience of drinking hot tea like some kind of an old lady, sinking deeply into the Tweek Bros coffee sofa and watching Tweek scrub the sink out of the corner of his eye. He had grown weary of waiting for his computer to respond to his commands, and he was very nearly out of games to play anyway. He had intended to download some more over the weekend, but had spent most of it asleep and his laziness had reached such a great extent that during his waking hours, he procrastinated even logging into his steam account and browsing the new releases. He really was sitting in a rut, and not even trying to get Bebe off his back had been working.

He listened to the sound of Tweek cleaning (it was drowning out the slow, eerie background music the guy usually had playing, so Craig didn’t have much of a choice) as he pulled out his phone and scrolled back through Bebe’s most recent messages. Most of them were uninteresting mentions about her friends and her plans for the summer, but Craig had to admit that he was starting to get more comfortable responding to her in more than five or six word bursts. Sometimes, she even had the decency to ask him a question.

 _What are you up to tonight_ had been the last, unanswered text. Craig had considered saying ‘work’, but in the end thought no because she would probably ask where he worked then and Craig would have to tell her. He wasn’t sure he could deal with having Bebe show up here at three am to say hi, and he double wasn’t sure he could see her face to face after seeing her without… you know. A shirt. It was alright seeing her on facebook, but in real life?

Craig had always wondered what it would be like to receive explicit images of someone else, but in the same way a person reads about having their house robbed or their car stolen, he had never believed it would ever be something that affected him. Sexy pictures were for fifteen year olds and hot people. And besides, didn’t Bebe think it was _risky_ to just send pictures to people like him? He could show anyone! Not that he would.

He took a mouthful of tea, and text her back.

_Sitting around playing games mostly._

She messaged back almost instantaneously.

_I’m watching movies with the ladies._

A picture came through, and Craig hesitated before opening it, but then he realised that if she was with other people she wouldn’t be sending suspicious images and so he opened it up. Sure enough, a fine few ladies were depicted in pyjamas and eating pizzas. Bebe appeared to be in the middle, and Craig had to admit she had a nice smile.

Maybe he was warming to the idea of her and him trying something out for size.

_Sounds kind of cool. What movies are you watching?_

He figured it would be something unexciting and chicky, like twenty whatever dresses or how many bottles of wine does it take until somebody loves me. He was surprised a d al little bit embarrassed at himself to receive the response.

_Lord of the rings marathon._

Nice. Better than he had thought.

He had been about to text back when a soft cough beside him made him jump, and his cell phone slipped out of his hands and onto his lap with a soft plop.

“Not playing your game?”

“No, I can’t concentrate on playing here. I might stop bringing my computer in after all.”

It was worth a try though, to bring it in to occupy himself, and he gave Tweek a cool smile which was somewhat shyly returned- Tweek towered over him and his apron was covered in chocolate powder, his hair was held back by a thin wire Alice band, and he was clutching a book in his hands that said _Grimorium Verum_. He was a fascinating picture. As usual.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he gestured to the spot next to Craig on the sofa, and Craig shuffled over to allow him more room.

“What are you reading?” Craig asked absently, as he tried to remember what he was going to say to Bebe in response.

“Oh. Nothing. It’s a translation of this book. About uh… stuff.”

“What kind of stuff.”

“Just stuff. A friend gave it to me forever ago but I never read it.”

Craig would have liked to not have been surprised, but he was.

“You have friends?”

It came out ruder than he meant it to. Tweek looked quite startled, and then quite upset.

“Yes of course I do! I had lots of friends when I was at the hospital! Well, some friends.” He shrugged and glanced down at the book he was holding. “Actually, the girl who gave me this wasn’t really my friend. More like- oh.” He cut himself off, and Craig felt his eyebrows crawl upward despite his efforts to maintain a look of indifference.

“More like what?”

Tweek had turned a very telling shade of red.

“Oh, man, never mind.”

He opened to book to a page marked with a crocheted bookmark, and bent the spine so it lay open easily on his lap. Craig took a few extra moments to just stare at him in shock while he pretended to read the same paragraph over and over in humiliation.

So Tweek Tweak had been getting some in the institution huh? How about that.

His first thought was that he couldn’t wait to tell his friends all about it. His second thought was one of horrified disgust.

What kind of a bastard was he? Would he really do that kind of thing?

He realised with sick feeling in his stomach that two weeks ago, he would have easily. And he noticed for the first time that maybe for some reason he couldn’t really put into words, he was beginning to actually _like_ Tweek Tweak.

…

By Wednesday morning somehow, without him really understanding what had happened, Bebe had convinced him to take her out for lunch at the City Wok. Maybe she had suggested it and he had just said ‘yeah cool’ without realising, or maybe it had been five am when he agreed so he didn’t been thinking all that clearly, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had at least pulled on some jeans that weren’t covered in spilled coffee and a shirt that didn’t attract too much attention to himself, and after a quick check in the mirror (his skin was looking so much better, but his lips were sore and chapped to buggery) he had made his way down to the downtown area to wait for her. And sure enough, at around eleven thirty am, she came. And she was wearing a sundress that made her breasts look immense and shoes that could only have been purchased with the proprietors discount at Clyde’s dads shoe shop.

“Hi.” She smiled, removing her sunglasses and slipping them easily into her purse. Her eyes were the plainest baby blue. Her lips were the smooth peachy colour of nude lipstick. “Ready to go?”

“Sure.”

He was glad that Mister Tweek had paid him last Friday. His debit card was loaded with at least enough money to buy her a bowl of rice. She hooked her arm in his and started pulling him in the direction of the restaurant, and he couldn’t help but notice that she smelled like that expensive perfume Clyde bought her a few months ago, and it was kind of nice but also a little bit cloying. Bebe was a girl who walked like she was the queen of the universe. She knew how to play a guy for her own profit, and Craig hated how watching the way she held her chin kind of made him want to give her money and material possessions. Fucking hell.

He wondered what Tweek would do in this situation, in an effort to distract himself. He realised that Tweek was probably not stupid enough to find himself in this situation. For a goddamned nut he was actually kind of smart. A troubling realisation, if ever there was one.

They made it to City Wok without Craig having to say much. Bebe happily did all the talking, and for some reason she took great pleasure in discussing how Wendy was starting to get sick of Stan Marsh and their relationship. Maybe Craig would have cared more if he still hated Stan, rather than just having developed thoroughly indifferent feelings toward him halfway through middle school. Apparently, he was a whiney little bitch, and a needy one at that. Which wouldn’t have been so much an issue if he didn’t spend all his time whining about needing Kyle Broflovski. That was hardly news. It had been a virulent rumour among the high school boys for at least three years now that the only reason Stan was still dating Wendy was because he was too deep in it to admit he was in love with someone else. Wendy made up at east forty percent of his entire personality. Maybe it wasn’t so great being Colorado’s precious sweetheart after all.

Craig had never really thought it was.

“Stan’s kind of a jerk.” He said carelessly, sitting down at the table and reaching for the menu. Bebe threw up her hands and rolled her eyes.

“Yes! Thank you! I’ve been saying that for _years_. I keep telling Wendy she would be better of with token or Kyle. Token is hotter and he’s rich. Kyle is super smart and so much more compatible with her its ridiculous.”

“Kyle wouldn’t go for her. Everyone knows he’s about as sexually motivated as this napkin. If the future of mankind depended on him fucking someone, we would be extinct in about one month.”

Bebe’s jaw dropped.

“Really?”

“Really.”

Craig neglected to tell Bebe that Eric Cartman had had his eye on Wendy since sixth grade anyway. And like hell he was going to loose her to his most prized enemy.

He was glad that at least his friend group was not so complicated. Clyde was a bit of a dumbass, and when Jimmy hung around with them craig kind of wanted to cram napkins in his ears to avoid listening to him make terrible, terrible jokes all the fucking time. But other than that things were straightforward.

“Well, I also suggested she should try having sex with Kenny just once. He was the best, I think. And I’ve slept with a lot of guys.”

Craig tried not to acknowledge that thinking about Kenny fucking an incredible number of people was making him self conscious and embarrassed.

“Mostly on dates you don’t admit that kind of thing.”

Bebe stuck her nose in the air.

“I can sleep with whoever I want however much I want.”

Craig wasn’t going to argue. He picked his meal off the menu (Fried rice with chicken, and that was only half because he thought it was hilarious how the guy behind the counter repeated the words in his inauthentic accent) and took Bebe’s order as well. After placing it, he returned to the table and it was almost like she hadn’t stopped talking for five seconds.

“So anyway. You don’t know any single guys who might be interested in taking Wendy out sometime?”

“Nope. My friends are all sluts.”

“Don’t use that word.”

“Sorry. My friends are all remorseless womanisers. Except Clyde.”

“Oh yeah? How is Clyde?” Her expression shifted to one of smugness, and it was actually kind of amusing the way she _knew_ she had the guy pinched between her neatly manicured fingers.

“Same as always. Dumb as a mud fence. Obsessed with making you fall in love with him.”

“He’s actually a kind of sweet guy.” She mused, playing with a curl of her hair. “It’s a shame he’s so average looking.”

A strange thing to say, considering she was currently on a lunch date with Craig Tucker, the epitome of inoffensive averageness in the twenty first century.

“By average, you mean ugly.” He poured himself a glass of water from the clear glass jug that had been standing on the table when they arrived. Around them, the restaurant wasn’t doing too badly. There were a couple of Mongolians in the far booth, and a group of tweenagers (one of whom Craig was sure was Ike Broflovski) having a smorgasbord on the other side of the room. The fryers were going and the whole place smelled kind of like soy sauce and beef noodles. He took a mouthful of his drink.

“Well, not _ugly_. Just not hot. Gosh, it’s a shame. I wish there was some way to rearrange qualities in a group of guys in order to refine them. If I could put Clyde’s mind and Stan’s romanticism in a body that looked like Kenny’s or the Tweak boy in my history class, I would never need another man again.”

Craig choked on his mouthful of water, and when he spit on the table Bebe gave him the kind of look you give a dog who just took a shit on the carpet in front of you.

“… Are you okay?”

“Fine! I’m fine.”

His eyes were watering, and he was coughing like a two-hundred-year-old pack-a-day smoker. There as water all over the table, and Bebe’s sundress had a few small spatters on the front. Other than that, he was A-ok.

“Sorry, but I thought you said that Tweek Tweak was attractive.”

“He is.” She deadpanned, and one perfectly sculpted eyebrow lifted as she watched him mop up his chin and the table in front of him. “In a character sort of way. I’m sorry, am I making you jealous by talking about other men?”

“No, no no no that definitely isn’t it.” Craig shook his head, and Bebe narrowed her eyes.

“Good. I quite like you Craig. You know that right? I always thought you were precious and brooding.”

Craig cringed, but tried to look somewhat touched by this revelation. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that actually, he was just seriously apathetic and kind of a dick.

“Okay? That’s cool. I always thought…”

_You had great tits._

“You were really smart. And funny?”

This seemed to please her, because she smiled.

“Excellent! We could make this work Craig. We really could.”

Craig wasn’t so sure about that.

…

“You uh, see that?” Tweek pointed into the mug and Craig peered over his shoulder, seeing the blobby shapes the black tea leaves had left in the cup but not seeing the pictures that apparently would tell him his future. “What does that look like to you?”

“By the handle?” Craig asks, and Tweek hummed.

“It looks like a dick.”

“…. Do you think?” Tweek turned the cup upside down and suddenly, the dick became a tree, and Craig wasn’t so sure any more. “It uh, could be a fish? Maybe there’s dicks in your future?”

“This is bullshit. Who did you say taught you this?”

“I didn’t.” Tweek stood up straight and scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. He set the cup on the counter, and Craig wished he would look at his face when he talked instead of gazing at the floor or his shoes of the space to the left of Craig’s head.

“So who did?”

“This nurse at the hospital She was a little crazy but I liked her. Mm…” he sighed and Craig thought that of ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle dirty ass, this was it. “I never got the hang of it.”

“… No shit.”

He looked embarrassed, and a lot like he regretted even mentioning that he could look at Craig’s tea leaves and maybe give him insight into his future endeavours, and in an effort to avoid further discussion he turned away and resumed unloading the dishwasher with gusto. Craig leant on the bench and watched him, and at the back of his mind he tried to see him through Bebe’s eyes.

He had a pretty good ass, Craig decided. And nice arms. And he knew that because Tweek had neglected to wear a button up shirt today, instead opting for a t-shirt that said _Lizard King_ and a windbreaker which he had discarded on top of the muffin cabinet while he was working. He seemed well rested as well tonight. The shadows under his eyes were not so dense and he had only drunk half a coffee since Craig had been there. Maybe his parents had upped his medication dosage or something. Maybe he had gotten his dick sucked the night before. Craig thought back to Tweek’s facebook profile and the relationship status there, and a little question of doubt rose to the top of his mind. Maybe it was an ex who gave him the book, he told himself. Or maybe they weren’t in that kind of relationship at all. Were inpatients even _allowed_ to have that kind of thing between them? Why did Craig care so much about whether or not Tweek had any kind of a dating history?

Maybe it was because Tweek was such a fascinating person. One of surprises and many facets, not at all like the cardboard cut out crazy Craig had thought he was a few weeks prior. Maybe Craig was just bored with this job, and needed something to distract him from the darkness and the tedium that came with working graveyard shifts.

Yeah, that had to be it.

“You know, if you _really_ want to know something about your future, I can tell you it?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Go on then.”

Tweek stood up and began reloading the dishwasher, first and foremost with Craig’s tea leaf covered cup. He hooked a lock of hair behind his ear and closed the dishwasher door.

“You’ll be handling urinal cakes.”

It took Craig a moment to realise that he was implying Craig go and swap out the nearly finished urinal cakes in the men’s room urinals for fresh ones.

“… Hilarious.”

“I’m not kidding, man. I don’t want to do it..”

“Who says you’re the boss of me?”

“Whose name is on the sign?” He pointed to the name on his apron. Tweek bros. Not Craig Bros. Craig walked right into that one. “Besides, it’s a really quick job?”

He sounded a little bit earnest, and Craig felt the most reluctant sensation at the corners of his lips. A smile, maybe? No, a smirk. Either way, it was _very_ unbecoming and detracted from the emphasis he was trying to place on his irritation.

“Fine.”

Tweek looked so relieved, and he gave Craig what would later be remembered as the first 100% genuine smile he had delivered as he hunted for the maintenance closet keys on the counter shelf.

“Stuffs in the closet.” He told him, passing the keys over with hands that shook ever so slightly. “I’ll be out the front when you get back.”

Craig was going to ask him what he would be doing out there, but decided he would find out when he returned anyway so what did it matter. The urinal cake changing was grim but it was over fast, and after a thorough hand washing Craig remerged feeling a new respect for every bathroom attendant he had ever ignore in the past and was likely to continue ignoring in the future. As promised, Tweek was not in his usual place behind the counter– he was standing outside on the pavement and gazing somewhat absently at the stars. Summer in Colorado brought the stars out vividly, the mountain line cut the horizon and even the lamps along the street couldn’t dim the celestial glittering of a million galactic friends. Puzzled, but not deterred, Craig wandered toward the front of the shop and swung open the door. Tweek turned to look at him when he did so, and thin wisps of smoke leaked out of the corners of his mouth when he asked

“Finished?”

“… Yeah.” Craig noticed he was holding what looked like a hand rolled cigarette, and suspiciously he shuffled forward to get a closer look. “Is this why you wanted to come outside? I didn’t know you smoked?”

“Well I do.” He held the cigarette strangely, between the joints of his second and middle finger, and when he drew on it his chest trembled, just a little bit. “Nn… You didn’t have to come out by the way, I was just telling you where I would be. In case you wondered.”

Craig looked around, realised he was outside on the dark street he had always regarded with a distinct sense of discomfort from inside  the shop, and instantly shrugged to look cool in front of someone he never would have suspected he would want to look cool for. It was a little less scary when the fluorescent lights in the store weren’t bleaching his corneas, and the movements of the breeze through dense bushes was a enchanting in the way HD TV was enchanting. There was a whole new dimension in it, not nearly as secretive and threatening as the whispering shivering that the bushes and treetops seemed to be from behind glass.

“It’s cool.”

Craig was more interested in Tweek, and the glowing embers which hung off the end of his cigarette, and it didn’t make sense because Tweek never smelled like smoke, and he was such a nervous type it seemed like he would be too worried about things like throat cancer or emphysema to risk the little high that nicotine could bring. Was there a catch? Was he smoking Pot or crack or something and Craig was just naive enough to believe that it was a regular rolled cigarette?

“That’s tobacco right?” he asked, and Tweek sighed as though he was sick of being asked questions about what kind of substances he was putting into his body, which he probably was.

“Of course it is.”

“How come I’ve never seen you smoke before?”

“When have you ever paid this much attention to me before?” He said, tapping ash off the end of his cigarette and keeping his eyes fixed upwards, on the milky spill of stars in the sky. “We catch the same bus from school and I stand there at the stop smoking almost every day. You never notice. It’s okay though, it freaks me out when people stare at me…”

Craig would have frowned, but to be honest that was probably right. He paid little to no attention to _anyone_ when he was waiting for the bus, let alone a skinny wraith of a boy who shied away from human contact and spouted nonsense about dwarves and gnomes whenever anyone even tried to start a conversation with him. He felt a little bad for it, but also somewhat uneasy, because he had forgotten again that this guy and that guy were in fact the same person. When Tweek was talking fluently and calmly like this, in a soft voice which sounded much more like his dads creamy simper, he very nearly might have passed as someone average. Someone unremarkable. How could he present so well in _this_ scenario and fall completely apart in others, Craig wasn’t sure he would ever know, and it was disarming and unwelcome to see. Humanising someone who had previously been little more than amusement to him was a process painful for the conscience and the pride.

“I guess if you have to have a vice this is better than some.”

“Well, I don’t know. Remember when it was cool in fourth grade to drink cough medicine? I’ve never had a throat infection since.”

Craig is almost certain he is making a particularly dry joke. But it doesn’t feel appropriate to laugh. Instead he tightens his jaw and pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans under his apron.

“I don’t think those two things are related.”

“Well I’m not complaining. I hate getting sick. My mind always jumps to the worst case scenario.” Tweek exhaled, and a ghost of smoke escaped his lips like he was breathing his soul away on the night air. He looked ethereal, backlit by the storefront and illuminated by the stars, and slightly misshapen. Like his body was put together differently to Craig’s and yet so similarly it was almost not noticeable. He had never looked more like that manic kid in elementary school and yet he had also never looked so different.

“… You’ve changed a lot.” Craig said.

The light wind picked up, and scuffed a few bits of litter down the gutters of the darkened streets. Tweek threw the dead butt of his cigarette into the gutter and shook his head. The last of the thin gauze of smoke coming out from between his lips smelt really unsanitary- like the unrinal cakes Craig had just been replacing.

“No. I don’t think so? I think rehab helped. And therapy.”

“I thought your parents took you to a hypnotist.”

“They did. But they tried everything else too. Mostly to get me off… you know.”

Craig did know. It kind of hung in the air for a moment unspoken, and Craig thought about what Tweek had been like those weeks before he left. Those weeks he had been getting over the addiction his parents had thrust upon him through reckless coffee additives and poor parenting. It was during those weeks that he had truly isolated everyone around him - There had been chaos and drama, and Craig hadn’t been directly involved but then again no one had really. The whole battle had been one between Tweek and his own head, and Craig would never forget the time he sat there in the back of class one day queasy because he had just watched Tweek try to peel his fingernails off with the broken end of a bic biro pen.

Now he was thinking about it his skin was goose pimpled, and he was starting to remember why it was he had _really_ decided to go along with his other friends when they ostracised him.

Tweek could be scary sometimes. He had _terrified_ Craig, many years ago. And Tweek, of indecipherable thoughts and incomprehensible mind, was terrifying him right now too.

 


	7. Thanking Based Freud for blaming your blood kink on your father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha hehehe im the laughing gnome dot jpg and other stories

It was funny, when Craig wasn’t working nowadays, he struggled to find himself all that much to do.

Days he had shifts, he would get up late and have maybe five hours to eat and shower and figure out a movie to watch or a short game to play, but the motivation to sit down and actually try to deal with his temperamental laptop long enough to whittle hours away like he used to disappeared, because he knew that however much effort he put into getting the next level to load or rebooting when the damned thing overheated he would have to be on his way out of the house soon and abandon it in the end. On the days he _didn’t_ have to go to work, he found himself bored and impatient with his laptop once again except now he didn’t have an excuse to put off logging on and making an attempt to level up any of his characters. Instead, he found himself in the kitchen making _coffee_ , of all things, and the instant stuff his mum drunk was dirty tasting and nasty compared to the sweet and creamy caramel lattes Tweek could conjure up and so often he found himself wishing he could just go by work and pick up a beverage.

And then he realised that there was nothing stopping him except his sense of pride and the fear that someone important might see him doing so, and after tipping the instant coffee down the sink he retired to his room in shame with a can of coke and thought maybe today would be the day he cleaned out his wardrobe packed with children’s toys and pilfered playboys with the Bunnys cut out. Maybe today would be the day he dusted, or wrote a letter to his grandmother, or re-arranged his furniture so that the head of his bed wasn’t against the wall he shared with his sister on the other side.

In the end he locked his door, woke up his computer _(come on, please work you sonovaotch)_ and decided he would have a go at masturbating. Just for a change.

Craig was a recovering chronic masturbator.

Fortunately for him, this knowledge was as yet known only to himself, and as much of a source of embarrassment it _would_ be for anyone to find out about it he didn’t think his jacking off habits were any more unusual than those of most other teenaged boys. Early puberty had brought a lot of problems for Craig, beyond just an explosion in height and pimples around age eleven that is, and he suspected he was probably one of the first guys in his peer group to realise that rubbing his dick would eventually result in temporary relief from all the anxieties and fears which came with hair in new places and a voice which had always sounded abrasive but now sounded like a farting duck in b flat. He was no Alexander Portnoy, but by age fifteen he had found himself carrying a small packet of wet-wipes at all times. The fact that now he could get himself off only three or four times a week and only in the privacy of his own bedroom was a great triumph and relief to him; There was nothing worse than the feeling of ejaculating in a bathroom stall at the mall or in between classes at school, except maybe that one time his sister had banged on the wall half way through and told him to shut the hell up.

She had thought he was crying. Oh, what a joke.

In any case, as a slightly older slightly less unstable version of himself Craig found that most of his frustrations in life could still easily be channelled into beating the meat, but there was a sort of comfort in the process now which seemed a million years removed from the guilty, fast way he used to finish himself of a few years previously. His fantasies were his own and they were soothing in times of sadness and ennui – two things which haunted the back of his mind when moodiness and boredom did not. Maybe they were simply truer forms of the same feelings which filled him up on a daily basis, He wouldn’t know. What he did know was that he was thinking about how he wished he could just text someone, have a conversation, or maybe enjoy a two person game of something like checkers or cards instead of passing his time by masturbating as he shucked his jeans and made himself comfortable on his skinny single bed. He had a bookmark folder of videos he had planned to watch, and he didn’t have any trouble finding something appropriate. The video was really just a prop anyway; he never _really_ concentrated on the people in the videos so much as he allowed himself to project the identities of other people on them. Sometimes himself. Sometimes people he found particularly appealing or attractive. By ‘people’ he of course meant ‘person’.

His computer shut down fifteen minutes in, but he was a little beyond the point of caring. Craig lay on his bed with his legs bent and spread, but his knees leaned in toward one anther as though it might hide the vulnerable places between them he was touching. His eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling as he concentrated, but he wasn’t concentrating on how sexy the video had been any more because somehow, he had started thinking about something else which made him feel kind of empty and frustrated and so his best solution had been to try something he had always thought about, but never done. Usually Craig had few qualms with the nature of his embodiment, but other times being _in_ himself, aware of himself and his breathing and the functions which defined a living form, made life troublesome. The hand stroking his erection was slow and ineffective, and the fingers sliding underneath, toward the place he had only ever dared to explore in his daydreams, had frozen. His heart was hammering and a cold sweat broke on his chest and back. He wanted it, but he couldn’t do it. He wanted it so fucking bad.

He gave up in the end. The struggle was far too great, and his fear that if he did, he wouldn’t be able to look at himself in the mirror again made him clammy and cold.

He neglected to finish even over the knuckles of his hand, and in annoyance rolled onto his stomach, his underwear still bunched around the ankle of his left leg and the dying sunlight flooding the corners of his small attic room.

 

…

 

He wasn’t sure why he did it.

He wasn’t sure at all because as far as he was concerned him and Tweek were still very much on friendly professional terms only, and even though his opinion of the guy had softened over the past three weeks he wasn’t convinced that they could ever really be more than late night acquaintances. Tweek still creped him out sometimes, and Craig was still an average guy with plans to keep his head down and his ambitions low – these plans would definitely in no way accommodate an eccentric barista and his wiles. All the same, somehow or another, he found himself digging his phone out of his pocket on a Tuesday afternoon filled with the burning need to have a conversation with someone, and in the dissatisfied way that was quite particular to Craig he made his way through A to S of his contacts without seeing _anyone_ he wanted to speak to. Everyone was either stupid, boring, annoying, or a combination of all three, and it wasn’t until he saw Tweek’s name he hesitated and sat down at the kitchen table to stare at it for a moment. To wonder.

What would Tweek have to say today? He almost always had something weird to say if Craig asked, and maybe that was what made him so much more _interesting_ than anyone else. Craig could _never_ guess what he was thinking, what might come out of his mouth next. Would it be an instruction, or an out loud musing about something that seemed normal but may in fact have had slightly unreal connotations? Craig didn’t know anything about him besides the fact that he loved coffee and he read quickly. Tweek never talked about movies he watched, people he knew, things he liked to do or even the things he hated. Crag could guess a few things based on their past history and the way he behaved when they were at work, but otherwise there was nothing nothing, and subsequent checks of his facebook had been no more lucrative than the first one. He smoked, that was something Craig supposed, but what he experienced when he did so, what he thought about when he was smoking or how he felt in the aftermath were all mysteries. He was just one _big_ mystery, with a fascinating face and a nervous manner, and he was so goddamned defensive a lot of the time that Craig supposed he shouldn’t be _surprised_ how little he knew about the guy. Or maybe it was his fault, for being a particularly unsociable person. Maybe it was about time he… you know. Made an effort.

Craig sighed and asked himself what could be the worst that happened. Tweek got uncomfortable and didn’t reply. That’s his loss considering Craig was making a conscious attempt to be friendly now, not just to be civil.

He opened SMS and keyed a brief text.

_Hey, whats up?_

It wasn’t until he sent it and let himself slump down onto the table that he asked himself what the fuck he was thinking.

He sat up completely erect and clapped his hand against his cheek in exasperation. A quick glance at the clock on the oven told him that it was eight pm. Eight pm and he was already so burned out he was making stupid mistakes.

What if Tweek thought he _liked_ him? What if Tweek was one of those weird guys who just kind of latched on to anyone who showed him decent kindness, and Craig was getting himself into some kind of fatal attraction situation whereby he would come home only to find Donnie boiling on the stovetop with carrots and leeks. The idea made him distinctly sick, and when his cellphone vibrated on the tabletop he looked at it as though it was the police calling, and he had several thousand dollars worth of stolen televisions in his closet.

Oh god.

He held his phone at arms length when he checked the message, and found he couldn’t read the letters on the screen. From closer proximity, he could see they said

_Youre not working tonight._

He groaned softly and realised he was in far too deep now to just back out.

_I know. im bored as hell so I thought id see what youre doing_

He figured he would probably be at work, making coffee and scrubbing surfaces as though his life depended on maintaining cleanliness.

_Oh. Nothing?_

_Liar_. Craig text him back, and found the corners of his lips turning upward wryly  because of course Tweek wouldn’t give up his secrets that easily. _You have to be doing something. Help a dude out. Im sitting in my kitchen watching the moths fly into the lightbulb._

He would have liked to say he was doing something cool, like buying a motorbike or dining with pinup models at the local Italian restaurant, but that would make _him_ the liar, and Tweek wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that.

_… well if you really want to know? im just sitting in my room reading._

_What are you reading?_

There was something distinctly satisfactory about finally asking. Even if it took him fifteen minutes to respond.

_The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell_

Craig didn’t know what the fuck that was.

_I see._

He gave up trying to make conversation, and decided he would just talk to Tweek at some later point in the week when they were both on shift.

 

…

 

It was Jimmy who suggested it, and Timmy who enthusiastically Agreed, and Kyle Broflovski (Who was with them because he and Token were supposed to be working on a pols class assignment together – what a joke) who rolled his eyes and said

“Can we _please_ just go somewhere so I can go to the bathroom,” and started leading them all in the direction of Tweek Bros coffee despite Caig’s insisting they go elsewhere.

“Uh, Guys can we not? We could go to the mall and go to Harbucks instead?”

“Princess needs to pee now apparently.” Clyde told him, nodding in Kyle’s general direction. Clyde really didn’t like Kyle that much. Craig had no idea why.

“Let him go then! He and Token shouldn’t have come.”

“Token is scouting for a new girlfriend. He can’t do that studying with Kyle.”

“Fuck.”

Before them, Tweek bros coffee loomed, and he hoped against hope that Tweek wouldn’t be there. Maybe he had gone home to sleep for once? And maybe if he pulled his hat low and tried to stay at the back of the crowd, he could slip in unnoticed with the others.

The familiar sound of Tweek’s music, wavering over the speakers, filled Craig’s head, and the shop was astonishingly busy – Mister Tweek was behind the counter, and for a moment Craig felt sweet relief because if mister tweak was here it was reasonable to assume that Tweek was not, but then he saw a blonde head bobbing around at the back of the shop cleaning tables and his guts clenched. He almost turned around and split. He also almost shat himself because holy fuck, what if he sees him! What if he tries to _talk to him_ in front of his friends?!

Tweek was a tolerable guy, but Craig had himself a comfortable little rut in his current social position. He didn’t want that disrupted any more than Kyle wanted Token to stop him on his way to the bathroom.

“What do you want to drink?”

“Orange juice? I don’t care! Hold this.” He shoved his messenger bag into Timmy’s lap and received a loud ‘Timmy!’ in response. “I’ll be back.”

He ducked between two tables and past the sofa Craig and Tweek had spent many late nights sitting on and talking.

The group migrated to the large booth beside the window, and Craig was the first to dive in, picking up a menu and holding it up in front of his face in case Tweek looked over and saw the group arranging themselves in there. It would look too goddamned suspicious if he ran out now. His only option was to sit and wait and hope the whole ordeal would be other soon enough.

Clyde, Token and Jimmy Slid in next to him. Timmy stayed where he was, clutching Kyle’s bag and looking excitedly around the crowded store.

God, that fucking music. Tweek was playing that album by the guy who couldn’t sing for shit. Craig hated the way he had actually started to enjoy the sound of his voice by the third or fourth time he heard it, and made a point from then on to point out to Tweek how much he loathed it. Tweek always smiled at him as if he knew he was a dirty fibber.

“What do I want?” Token asked himself quietly.

“M-Muh-may I suggest the Bahhh… The Brazilian roast? It’s quite mild.”

“No way, he should get this.” Clyde pointed to Tweek’s personal favourite beverage. The americano. Size humongeous.

Craig decided he wouldn’t get anything, just in case he drew attention to himself.

They consolidated their orders and Token went up to collect them. In the end, everyone just agreed on a straight up jug of standard and whatever quiches Token was generous to buy them from the front window. Kyle got back before Token did, looking somewhat pissed off about something, and as he sat down he pulled off his hat and dropped it carelessly on the table.

‘What’s up your ass?” Clyde asked.

“Some asshole threw the urinal cake on the floor and I slid on it on my way out the door.” He shook out his hair, and he definitely had a lot of it to shake around. It was bright auburn and almost certain to attract Tweek’s attention because for some reason, when Kyle took his hat off, everyone in the vicinity turned to stare at him.

Craig groaned against his will. He hated that his first instinct upon hearing this was to go and clean it.

He sunk low in his seat and tried to look invisible.

 

…

 

“I thought your parents were taking you to Paris?”

Token shrugged, and Clyde sighed as if he cared that he wouldn’t be getting a fridge magnet that says ‘my friend went to the Eiffel tower and all I got was this crappy souvenir’.

“Not now. Now I’m having a party. It’s in two weeks and everyone goes stag.

“Wuh-what about C-Craig? He and Bebe are d-da-da… he and Bebe are dating.”

“No we aren’t!” Craig snapped at Jimmy, the first time he had said anything since sitting down. “We aren’t dating.”

“Stan said Bebe told Wendy that you were.”

“Shut up _Kyle_. You and Stan are dating.”

Kyle went a furious shade of magenta, and returned his attention to his coffee.

“… Right. So anyway. My party?” Token seemed unhappy to be interrupted, but that was fine with Craig. It meant everyone would go back to listening to him, and Craig could return to his state of nervous thinking.

_Please don’t let him see me. Please don’t let him see me. Please oh please oh please._

He was starting to see similarities between himself and the object of his anxiety. What would happen if Tweek did spot him and try to start up a conversation? Oh, nothing much. Everyone would make fun of him for a million years. He would become an utter joke, and have to convert to a life of hermitage. And then he would be stuck only ever talking to his guinea pigs for the rest of his life.

He fiddled uncomfortably with the pockets of his cargo shorts and gazed down at the edge of the table in front of him. The coffee they had brought before was dwindling, and he didn’t want to get his hopes up that their visit was nearly over, but they had been forty minutes and Tweek had drifted past three or four times already without noticing them sitting there. Maybe he was off the hook?

“Craig can date whoever he wants, but he’s coming to my place alone. Everyone is. Even Kenny. Someone pass the message on to Kenny by the way.”

He poured the last of the coffee jug into his cup and added two packets of coffee crystals. Clyde nodded seriously and Craig heaved a sigh. Kyle was texting, and Craig was pretty sure he could guess who it was. The excited chatter of earlier, mostly about new video game releases and the nature of that new girlfriend Jimmy was currently in the process of seducing, had faded. It all seemed as though this social even was wrapping up.

“Refill anyone?”

Craig practically jumped out of his skin when out of nowhere, Tweek’s voice breezed, and he realised when he snapped his head up to stare at him that  it was too late – Tweek had seen him and there was no way in hell he could dive under the table without drawing attention to himself.

The boy smiled tightly at them, and the look was as cold as the coffee jug he held was hot. His hair was pinned off his forehead and there were new band aids on his fingers as well as one on the side of his neck. Craig noticed that one of his apron ties were loose, but he didn’t want to say anything even though he really felt he should. He swallowed the lump in his throat and pulled self-consciously on the earflaps of his hat.

“Uh, sure yeah.” Clyde wiggled his eyebrows mockingly and held out his cup. Kyle shot him a dirty look and pushed his mug forward too.

“Yes. Thanks, Tweek.”

“Welcome, Kyle.”

Craig would have been amused, that he purposefully avoided filling Clyde’s cup, if he hadn’t been so goddamned horrified about this whole situation.

“If you, uh, want anything else, let me know. Hey Craig.”

Craig’s stomach plummeted and he let his eyes close in irritation when Tweek addressed him. The whole table fell painfully silent, and he was so certain that everyone was looking at him when he opened his eyes that he had to absolutely galvanise his expression of indifference despite the fact that his pulse was racing and his stomach was turning over like a car engine on a cold day. Tweek was peering at him over the jug of coffee, and he looked just the same as he did at night except now he was in the sunlight and his skin was like the thin pale silk of those handkerchiefs his grandmother used to tuck in her sleeve, and his jaw had a nice shape that might not have looked out of place on a Calvin Klein poster but he was shaking, and his voice was cracking like his balls had yet to drop, and Craig blinked at him like he didn’t know why the fuck he was talking to him and said

“Uh, hi?”

The change of expression which passed over Tweek’s face was incredible. There were at least twenty different ones all within the space of one second and most simply they could be described as all falling somewhere on the scale of shock, embarrassment, fury and then despair, and it was in that order that his face transformed from semi-composure to complete misery and he stood up ramrod straight, the jug of coffee held rigidly in his hands. Clyde snorted and Token hid his smile discreetly behind his hand.

Craig felt like he did all those times he had accidentally squashed Mojo a little bit with his leg. But he couldn’t rush to apologise and curse himself out for this one, oh no, because that would mean loosing face and there was no way in _hell_ he could do that in front of his friends. And Kyle.

Instead he just watched as Tweek walked away, and when everyone stopped giggling long enough to ask him what _that_ was all about he said “I have no fucking idea.”

No one noticed that Craig didn’t flip him off when he stalked back behind the counter. Something he almost certainly would have done, if Tweek really was a stranger.

No one noticed the filthy, hurt looks Tweek was sending him across the store either. And that was probably the more fortunate thing.

 


	8. Accidentally elbowing your friend in the balls and feeling like the shit king of turd mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wow okay sorry this chapter is pretty crap but tbh i had a lot of trouble preventing this whole affair devolving into some kind of a 2am fistfight in the coffee store. Which would have been a delight but also would have really fucked up my alleged 'plot' (alleged is an important word ok) so ahhhhhh yes. sorry. D:

“Oh man. Hi peter. Come to deny me again?”

“I know you’re angry, and I’m really sorry, but you’re going to have to let me explain.”

Craig pulled his hat off and stashed it under the counter, and Tweek gave him a critical look from his spot leaning over the till. He looked even more washed out than he had a day prior, and his hair had come out of the clips he had tried to pin it back with, but it was obvious by the stack of mugs in the sink that he had drunk at least five coffees in the last two hours and he seemed pretty clear headed, because there was no way in hell Craig could deny he looked hurt and furious.

Funny, anger wasn’t the kind of emotion he would have attributed to Tweek. Self-blame, maybe. Fumbling frustration, sure. But anger?

“Okay. So…” Tweek shrugged and raked his fingers through his locks. “Go on then. Explain”

“… Okay. Well it’s like this.” Craig had himself poised to justify his behaviour, even apologise at length if necessary, but upon actually being given a space of time in which he might talk freely he found he actually had nothing to say. “… You got my nuts in a vice here dude.”

This seemed to set him right off.

“Oh man, why’s that? Are you under ‘too much pressure’ to come up with a good reason to ignore me? How about ‘I’m a horrible person and I’m embarrassed to be associated with you’? Sound about right?”

It’s the most Craig has ever heard Tweek say without fucking up or flaking out, and in some horrible way it was awe inspiring.

“… That’s not it.” He said.

Tweek screwed up his nose and shook his head.

“I don’t believe you.”

“It’s not!”

“ _I._ _don’t. believe. You._ ”

“Oh my god! It’s not even that much of a big deal calm the fuck down!”

This was obviously the wrong thing to say.

All of his anger disappeared, melting away like the frost on a fresh summer morning, and the hard little kernel of pain and betrayal was all that was left showing on his face. For the first time in history, Craig was seeing into Tweek’s eyes and knowing absolutely 100% what was going on in his head.

“Maybe it’s not a big deal to _you_.”

And suddenly, Craig knew that Tweek was acutely aware of every mean thing everyone had ever said about him.

…

In his head Craig tried to justify what had happened most of the night, while Tweek sat in his usual armchair with a mug of coffee and brooded about how shitty a person Craig was. At least, that was what Craig figured he was doing, because he didn’t twitch or move once he just stared into space, and Craig lingered behind the counter organizing, disorganizing, and reorganizing the sugar packets and spoons and the tall glass bottles filled with syrup that they used to flavour the coffee. Why had he pretended not to know Tweek? Besides the obvious. Maybe the question should have been ‘how could he explain it to Tweek without sounding like an utter dick?’

Yeah. He just wasn’t able to think of one. Because the more he considered what had happened, relative to how he enjoyed Tweek’s company compared the company of his other so-called friends, the more he started to question his motives.

Did he _really_ want to be a part of that group then? That group of people who were so willing and eager to criticise someone so innocuous and pleasant? Tweek was delicate and shy, but the more time Craig spent with him the more he was starting to realise that Tweek had a personality under all that worry and _feelings_ to boot. And he was kind of funny. And fairly bright. It was unusual to think that someone so irrational as Tweek could also be an analytical thinker, but he had clearly displayed good reasoning and a certain amount of rationalisation. Particularly in regards to figuring out what was really happening among their peers behind his back.

Or maybe he was just a lucky guesser. Someone who just knew things without knowing exactly how they knew it. Craig couldn’t say, but he jumped when he heard Tweek’s voice break the silence.

“You want to change the album for me?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

Craig hadn’t even noticed the music had gone off. He made his way to the sound system, set up on the top shelf behind the counter and right next to all the spare receipt rolls and stationary. Tweek’s iPod was plugged in to the speakers.

“Anything particular you want?”

He waited for a moment to hear his response, but none came. A cold feeling slipped down his back, and he fumbled with the dial on the device in an effort to find some good music to listen to. Unfortunately, as far as good music went, Tweek’s iPod was a complete bust. He chose the only album on the list he knew, the one with a banana on the cover, before he realised that the guy who fronted this band wasn’t any better of a singer than that other guy Tweek seemed to like. Even though he regretted it he left the music playing, and went back to rearranging all the bits and pieces behind the counter.

Why _does_ he have to be a part of his current group of people? Surely there were better things for him out there? So what if he lost a few connections and earned a few strange looks in the hall. It wasn’t like there was anyone he particularly _cared_ about amongst the so called friends he chose to spend his days with.

Or wait. Maybe there was that one thing.

Craig bit his lip, and wondered if _that_ was the last fragile thread which tied him to the status quo. He hoped not, because that seemed all kinds of pathetic. But it was the best reason he had so maybe, just maybe Tweek would accept it.

“You know,” he started, picking a damp cleaning cloth off the countertop and casually swiping it along the top of the coffee machine. “There _is_ a reason I can’t just accept that my friends would boot me if they knew I hung around with you. It’s not like I wouldn’t if I could.”

Tweek didn’t say anything, but he did lift his eyebrows a few centimetres and turn strange green eyes to craigs face. Craig bit the inside of his cheek, and carried on.

“Before you ask, I’m not telling you what it is.”

“I know what it is.” Tweek told him softly. And Craig’s blood turned cold in his veins.

“… What?”

“I know why you stick around with those guys. I have a problem with my head, but I’m not _stupid_. I kinda think…” he trailed off, and his eyes fluttered softly. That ghostly tic again, such a far throw from the weird jerky thing he used to do when he was younger. It occurred to Craig that he never asked what he had done to treat that specifically. Was it the hypnosis, or something else?

“You kinda think what?” Craig asked him, and he hoped with all his heart that whatever Tweek said next would be so far removed from the truth of the matter that it was laughable.

“Nothing.”

“ _Fucking tell me_!”

“Jesus Christ! Don’t _yell at me_!” Tweek clamped his hands over his ears so suddenly that his cup of coffee fell from his lap. It thunked onto the floor, and coffee spilled in slow motion across the tiled floor. Tweek, however, didn’t seem to care, and Craig was too shocked to notice. “I’m sorry I even said anything! _Fuck_.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and leaned forward toward his knees. Craig felt something tug on his heartstrings and a lump rose to the back of his throat. He hadn’t even really raised his voice that much, but for a moment there he had forgot that he couldn’t just get shitty with Tweek like he did with Token or Clyde. Tweek wasn’t as good at handling aggression or harsh treatment as Token or Clyde – in fact he wasn’t good at it at all and honestly, watching Tweek fall apart felt like he was seeing something shameful. He wanted to look away but he couldn’t, and he wanted to ignore it (because it wasn’t _normal_ ) in the hopes that he might be able to deal with it on his own accord, but neither of those things seemed very kind to do. The thought of doing them made him feel a guilt much greater than the guilt he had felt in the aftermath of that afternoon.

He pressed his lips together and counted slowly to three. The music played softly in the background and it was starting to drill into the back of his brain. After a few seconds had passed, and he felt the tension drain out of him, he edged around the counter and approached Tweek’s chair.

“I’m sorry.” He said, and it felt weird in his mouth because he really couldn’t remember the last time he had apologised to someone from the bottom of his heart. “I didn’t mean to yell, and I didn’t mean to upset you earlier. I was just trying to cover my ass.” He brushed his fingers hesitantly against the side of Tweek’s shoulder, and the boy stopped quivering like he was shit scared of something. Possibly Craig raising his voice again. Craig could hear him breathing heavily, through his mouth, and unsure what to do next he tried to pry those hands away from the side of his friends head. It wasn’t easy, but sitting on the coffee table he managed to do it, and as he pushed Tweek’s forearms down he opened his eyes and blinked blearily, as though the silence and the bright lights had startled him.

“… Are you okay?” Craig asked.

Tweek’s cheeks darkened, and he nodded.

“Sorry. I’m sorry, I _hate_ yelling. It makes me… you know.”

“Freak out?”

“I was going to say panic, but… uh…”

“Right. Sorry.”

He made a note to himself to use gentler words. No more crazys, Spazzes or flipping shits. He probably owed the guy that much.

“I accept your apology.” Tweek mumbled, his eyes sliding off Craig’s face and down toward the coffee mug on the floor. “But I’m still upset.”

That’s probably the best Craig could have hoped for.

…

The silence that followed was not unfriendly, but it was awkward, and Craig had returned to his spot behind the counter to wait it out. He tried to think of things to talk about, but could think of very few if any, and after exchanging a few very bored texts with Bebe, he wondered if maybe he should text Kenny and find out what he had been up to lately. Craig hadn’t seen him in what felt like a very long time.

But he wasn’t sure he was comfortable now, texting Kenny while Tweek was around.

He put his phone away, and tried to think of something else to do instead.

A around five am, his tired eyed found the large chalkboard overhead, the design of which had changed two days previously. What had been a pleasantly arranged geometric menu list had transformed into a swirling, somewhat enchanting landscape of chalk grapevines and serrifed font. The items were arranged in alphabetical order, and the descriptions were inn standard sized letters, and Craig thought about the help wanted sign that had brought him here, etched in Tweek’s naturally jagged hand. Strange, how nature and careful practice could generate such opposing results in a single persons handwriting. It was a good metaphor for Tweek’s everyday life actually. His disposition verses all the medicine he was probably on, his nervousness verses all the social conditioning, his erratic action verses all the training and meticulous effort he put into performing normal tasks. Amazing. Other worldly. Unimaginable.

Craig stared at the little Tweek bros logo at the bottom of the board and realised quite arbitrarily that it was spelled not like the surname ‘Tweak’ but like the first name, ‘Tweek’. Had Tweek’s father done him the disfavour of naming him after his _business_?

“Hey Tweek?” he was relieved to finally have found something to talk about. “Can I ask you something?”

“Uh, as long as you don’t ask me that. It’s kind of terrifying.”

“What? You do it to me. Well anyway. Why is your name the same as the shop name? I only just noticed.”

“Oh that. They liked the name Tweek I guess.”

“Were you named after the store, or…”

“The store was named after me. It used to be ‘The Coffee Horror Picture show.”

“… That’s disturbing.”

“My dad isn’t a very funny man.”

“No shit.”

The corners of Tweek’s mouth turned up tentatively and he shrugged. “I, uh… I hate it. My name. It’s embarrassing. I want to switch to my middle name but I cant until I’m old enough to live alone. But then I’m not sure I want to live alone. Ahhh… nevermind that though it’s complicated.”

Craig is sure it is. He doesn’t want to get involved. Instead he tried to follow the stream of conversation namewise. It was kind of an unexpected thing to hear Tweek say and he was really quite interested.

Gosh, fancy Craig Tucker being _interested_ in something.

 “Middle name?”

He forgot sometimes, that other people sometimes had other names. He had lived his whole life with only two.

“Mm. you have one?”

“No. what’s yours?”

He looked slightly embarrassed for a moment, but he said it anyway, probably because he realised that if he wanted to switch names, he would eventually have to admit to everyone what his middle name was anyway.

“It’s Declan.”

He blew on his coffee tersely and avoided meeting Craig’s eye.

Craig had never heard this name in his life, but thankfully it sounded actually like a name, not just an action randomly appropriated and attributed to a nervous seventeen year old boy (For example, Tweek).

“Right. Nice.”

And Craig let that little fragment of information fall into place in his head, and the biography about his new companion he was only just beginning to make.

…

As the nights went on, things became less awkward, but Craig couldn’t shake the feeling that Tweek was warier of him now than he had been, and all the progress he had been making p to that point had been for nothing – his workmate was once again unsmiling and jittery, and very rarely spoke to him unless doing so was absolutely necessary to their jobs, but on one or two occasions Craig caught him looking at him with a sorrowful almost wistful expression that did nothing but aggravate the guilt he was feeling still just as clearly as he had felt it that first night.

He found himself looking forward to dawn on Sunday morning more than usual, that wonderful point in time where he might leave and not have to come back for a half a week, but in another way he was kind of dreading it because then he would have no one around him and that was the thing he had started to become accustomed to. It wasn’t the conversation, it was the _company_ , and even though he was inconsistent and uncomfortable and kind of an enigma on legs Craig had become familiar with the sound of Tweek _being_ and the sense of him just existing in a shared space. The thought of going back to his empty house stressed him out a little. The thought of going back to his group of friends who understood nothing about knowing when to not talk made him feel hollow and glum. But maybe that was just the tiredness that came from working such late shifts.

His phone said it was almost five fifty, and he was standing at the counter waiting for Tweek to finish making him a latte, and it was kind of uncomfortable because Tweek hadn’t said all that much to him that night and he seemed more highly strung than usual. If they had been on better terms, Craig might have jokingly suggested he go and have a smoke, but he had a feeling that Tweek’s use of tobacco was quite private and possibly even a sensitive topic for him. Mostly on account of the fact that he made no effort to advertise it, and he had neglected to bring it up since.

He watched Tweek squirt cream into his coffee to go with the big squirting can, and noted that he had band-aids on his fingertips again. Maybe from biting them until they bleed?

“Here.” He passed Craig the drink and rounded the counter, and Craig was going to ask what he was doing before he remembered that he was probably heading out to put the specials sign out on the footpath. Indifferent, he sipped his drink and followed Tweek dutifully toward the door. Outside, the sun was rising, and the frigid air rushed in when the door was pushed open and it made Craig suck a breath between his teeth. Tweek, apparently didn’t notice, holding the door wide and nudging the specials board outside with his foot.

“You could have asked me to do that.” Craig told him, slipping under his arm and pulling the board out of the doorway properly. “On my way, you know?”

“I never thought of that.” Tweek let one door swing shut and wearily he leant his weight against the frame of the other.  “Oh man, I’m sorry. I’m really tired today…”

“Sleep better.”

“I don’t sleep. How many times do I have to say it?”

“Yeah but you should though.”’

“Uh huh. What are you, the sleep cops?”

“Sure thing.” Craig sucked on his drink straw and idled pointlessly in front of the door for a moment, one hand in the pocket of his jeans. Tweek watched him through bleary eyes, with an almost sense of _why are you still here_ that would have made Craig more self conscious, if he hadn’t suddenly thought of something to mention. “I still have to come in on the fourth right?”

The fourth of July was this coming Wednesday. Craig’s only plan besides work had been to sit at home and watch star wars for the millionth time. He had assumed the place would be running, and as such had declined invitations to join his friends for fireworks and drinks.  
Tweek looked at him as though his temper was very short, and Craig was very stupid.

“Uh, no. Dad is covering for both of us because they don’t want to pay you holiday rates.” He tipped his head against the frame and Craig felt something like a foot being propelled into his stomach. “What did you think?”

“… What?”

“You aren’t working. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Uhm, no!”

Craig wasn’t sure why he was so put out. He should be _glad_ to not have to work until Thursday. Tweek’s face went from tired annoyance to fearful alarm quite quickly.

“What? Oh man, are you serious?! I _swear_ I told you like… on Friday. We had a full conversation.”

“No we didn’t.” the way Craig figured it, he could either wind him up or let it go. No work this week. No big deal. “It doesn’t matter though. Good thing I asked!” he pulled his brows together and Tweek narrowed his eyes.

“… Are you _sure_ I didn’t tell you?”

“Yes. Very.”

Or maybe Tweek did mention it and Craig was too tired to really pay attention. He sighed and scuffed his shoes on the pavement, and noticed the way that the purplish orange light of the sunrise made their shadows particularly dark and particularly long.  Tweek shrugged and bowed his head.

“Oh. Well sorry then I guess.”

“So, uh, I’ll see you on Thursday?” Craig had to cock his head and bend his knees to catch Tweek’s eye. ‘I _am_ working Thursday?”

“Of course. Yeah.”

And even though it looked like it took a lot of effort, Tweek nodded and gave him a weary smile. The colours of the daybreak made the planes of his cheeks look sharper than usual, and his features had a very beautiful elegance about them that was perhaps muted by everyday light. His lips were chapped and thin, and the rims of his eyes red and wet, and Craig almost asked him what was wrong. Instead he heard himself say

“Hey, you know I’m sorry right? For earlier this week.”

There was a moment where Tweek looked like he didn’t know what he was talking about.

“Huh?”

“For ignoring you? When I was with the others?”

Understanding dawned on his face, and a loud ‘Oh!’ escaped him, followed by a hurried denial and fierce shaking of his head.

“Oh that! No no no, it’s not that. Jesus Christ. No. I’m sorry, I’m fine, I’m just kind of not feeling… uh.” He sighed and ruffled his hair. “I’m kind of sick today I guess. Sorry.”   

“… So we’re good then?”

“Good?”

“Like…. Still friends.” Craig shrugged, realising that this was the first time he had ever indicated out loud they might be more than a pair of persons who merely tolerated each other. Apparently this didn’t escape Tweek, because he looked very surprised, and then turned a deep crimson colour which certainly flattered him. Craig resisted the urge to grin.

“Uh, yeah. I mean I guess? Sure? Oh fuck.” He covered his mouth with his hand to hide his blush, and averted his eyes as best he could. Craig’s fingers tightened on his cup of coffee.

“Text me sometime then?”

“Like, on your phone?”

“Well, yeah. Unless you have some other way to do it.”

“I do not.”

Craig allowed himself a little smile and pressed the end of his straw to his bottom lip. Looking back, it would feel like one of those moments where he was a fourteen year old girl talking to her favourite celebrity, but at the time it just felt new and exhilarating. Like he was meeting someone new. Like he was making a change in his life he had never thought to make before.

Something that would have been impossible a month ago was happening, and he felt like he was on the cusp of a whole new world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> neat.


	9. Making eye contact with strangers while eating an ice cream cone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahaha! so i've dicked up and now i have to rewrite a whole lot of chapters ive already written but not posted because i decided i wanted to add more porn and more clyde (although those two things are unrelated). updates may be a little slower, but also they may not. im not sure yet?
> 
> sorry everyone. :(

Last minute plans weren’t impossible to make – the general understanding was that the group of them, plus whatever girls and extras Token could round up, would be spending the night of the fourth pond side, setting off the fireworks Kenny snatched from his parents back shed and maybe making awkward Smalltalk with the slightly more poplar group of high school students who would be parked a little way down from them on the shore. Craig thought this sounded better than backyard sparklers with his unpleasant sibling and parents, and after arranging a ride to the pond with Butters Stotch he proceeded to hibernate for forty eight hours. Sometimes he got up to eat or use the bathroom, but mostly he snoozed and ignored texts from Bebe. Unsurprisingly, but somewhat disappointingly, a message from Tweek never came.

The morning of July the fourth came around soon enough, and Craig got up at nearly midday and showered. He put on a load of laundry as well, because he figured if he didn’t do it now, he never would - the t-shirt he was planning to wear that evening was the last clean one he had. He shaved quickly, even though his facial hair was slow growing when it bothered to grow at all, and as such ended up with mild razor burn on the left side of his jaw. Once he had done all of this, and raided his refrigerator for any un-drunk cans of diet coke, he was ready to go, and Butters arrived at three pm to collect him in the Stotches quaint little four seater car.

Kenny was already there, riding shotgun and drinking a can of blue ribbon. He grinned broadly at Craig when he slipped into the backseat, and of course the first thing that came out of his mouth was

“How’s Bebe?”

“Fuck off.”

Craig pulled the door closed and checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed any texts. Butters was a pretty good driver, so he wasn’t to concerned about buckling his seatbelt, but as the road turned from smooth asphalt in the town to potholed dust heading over toward the woods and the pond on the edge of town, he had to grip the handle in the door a little tighter. The music Butters had playing was generic and cheerful, and it matched the warm weather and the mood that Kenny seemed to be in – that is to say smiling and talkative. More than usual. He was quite invested in talking to Butters about some new thing Butters’ parents were making him do this year, involving student exchange and secondary language acquisition. Butters seemed less enthusiastic about it than Kenny did, and Craig felt at least a little envy because unless it was related to girls, Kenny was _never_ so interested in anything Craig did or planned to do.

“Why are your parents making you do it, if you don’t want to? You should want to, by the way. I’m so jealous.”

“Well I dunno. It’s kinda scary to think about leaving home an’ all even for a couple of months. Dad thinks it will be an exercise in discipline and attitude improvement for me I guess…”

“What? There’s nothing wrong with you attitude Butts.”

Privately, Craig agreed. Butters was already someone he found annoyingly chipper at the best of times. At the worst of times his awkward attempts to please everyone and his unfortunate tendency towards extreme suggestibility made him a literal doormat that Craig couldn’t have respected if he tried, but this was unrelated to the truth of the matter – Butters was a likeable and sweet guy, and his attitude couldn’t be more accommodating and optimistic. If somewhat malleable. God, why was it that Craig found something to hate in even the most pleasant people? It was a shame really. Completely hindered his ability to interact with people a lot of the time.

He was relieved to get out of the car when they arrived, and feel the sunlight and the summer breeze touch his face.

There were quite a few people there, sitting around a few old picnic tables among the dense fur trees, and some of them Craig knew only superficially. That red headed girl who hung out with Bebe sometimes. Clyde’s quiet friend Phillip from history class. A small knot of girls hoping to be Kenny’s next girlfriend of the week and for some reason, Kyle Broflovski. The latter seemed to be engaged deeply in conversation with Bebe - Something that made Craig jealous on principle more than because he actually cared who Bebe made an effort to talk to, and as such he made a beeline to their table and plonked three cans of coke down in front of where he planned to sit.

“Hey.”

Bebe’s face lit up, and Kyle furrowed his eyebrows, glancing at Craig as if to say ‘seriously, its 87 degrees ad you decided to wear _that_ ’. Craig pretended that he wasn’t sweltering in his jeans and woollen hat, and sat right next to him so their thighs were touching.

“Hi Craig, I was just talking to Kyle about his plans for the school council next year.”

“Are you running for a spot?” Craig asked nonchalantly, pulling the tab on a cola and tossing the ring into the bushes when it came off on his finger. Kyle blinked and his lips thinned just a little.

“Actually, I’m the president.”

“Oh right. I voted for you. Or maybe I voted for that other guy. Whatsis name.”

“… Cartman?”

“No. I mean, yes.” He sipped his drink coolly and tried giving Kyle one of those smiles like Tweek gave customers. The one that said quite clearly he didn’t trust them as far as he could throw them. Kyle rolled his eyes dramatically and sighed.

“If you’re trying to start a fight Craig, I’m not your guy.”

When he stood up and climbed out of his seat, Craig watched him closely, and he was uncomfortably aware of Bebe watching him watch Kyle but he pretended not to be just in case it showed on his face. He flipped the guy off as he stalked towards where Butters and Kenny had congregated, and thought absently that he didn’t really have anything against Kyle. Really. Maybe he was out to start a fight after all.

“… You’re jealous.”

He was quite startled when Bebe leaned closer and jabbed him teasingly in the arm. “You were jealous ‘cause he was talking to me.”

“Wasn’t.” Craig snapped, turning back to face her and brushing her hand away as briskly as he could without being rough. “I can’t be bothered with his pompous ass today.”

“It’s okay to be jealous, Craig. God. If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t taking the bait.”

“Oh yeah. That makes me feel great, thanks Bebe.” He felt his relatively neutral mood begin to dip below the serene plateau it had been on so far, and in agitation and habit more than any expectation for a message, he checked his phone. “I’m only over here because I don’t want Clyde and Token to drag me into the pond with them.”

“They said they were waiting for Jimmy before they went swimming. He’s coming with Timmy later tonight.”

At least, Craig thought, that brought him someone time before his companions would be slinking around among the group trying to cajole him into the pond. For some reason, whenever their brigade was near a body of water, ‘get Craig as cold and wet as possible’ seemed to be the order of the day. Admittedly, this was probably because of the lot he put up the most resistance.

“Better safe than sorry.” He mused, and Bebe sighed.

He had to admit, that in her summery crochet singlet and pink tinted sunglasses, she looked stunning. And her perfume had a delicate quality he might have found enchanting, if he was the kind to be easily drawn in by the idea of the sensual. When she brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, he felt himself blush uncomfortably, and he privately hated how easy it was for her to make him feel like a nobody. A weirdo and a creep, and like there was something inherently _wrong_ with him because he couldn’t ever imagine himself happy and in a relationship with her.

“Lighten up. Its summer! You’re worse than him.” she gestured discretely to Kyle, who was receiving a slightly drunken hi-five from Kenny. If Craig didn’t know better he almost might have believed he heard a tone of derision in her voice. “Flitting around all lopsided and mopey because Stan isn’t coming.”

“Oh yeah? Same.”

This made Bebe laugh. Hard. And Craig thought that he had to stop being so funny because if he kept that up she won’t back off any time soon and leave him be. The main problem, of course, was that he didn’t think he’s _being_ all that funny. Bebe just seemed fond of laughing at inappropriate times.

“You looking forward to the fireworks?” she asked quietly, and her eyes did that thing that Craig has only ever seen in movies where they flicker down, then up, then down again and her lashes looked like a butterflies wings fluttering. They were dark with mascara. Her hair shone in the sun.

He almost leapt out of his seat when, under the table, he fe;t a petite bare foot brush against the side of his calve. And then higher. When it reached the inside of his knee he sat up straight and tried to clench his thighs together.

“Kenny brought them?” he asked stiffly.

“Token actually. His parents gave him some money for sparklers but he bought a big box of rockets and stuff. Neat huh?” she smiled and her toes curled against the side of Craig’s leg.

He reminded himself sternly, that whatever she says, he couldn’t let himself go walking in the woods with her alone. Bebe was the kind of girl why ate boys like him alive.

 

…

 

It was strange, the more ‘fun’ Craig was having the more he missed the warm hum of  the coffee shop and the eerie silence of the streets outside, and as the sun went down and people like Kenny were getting drunk enough to start hitting on people he didn’t even know the names of he found himself sitting in his exact same spot emptying his last can of coke and wishing that he could hear the quiet rustle of Tweek turning pages, of the rumble of the bean grinder as Tweek made them a brew.

What was the guy even doing right about now? Sitting at home alone? Reading like he said he would be or watching the news and fretting because the ice caps were melting, or the US dollar was down three cents today against the euro. For some reason, the memory of Tweek and the news when they were children floated to the surface of Craig’s mind. In sixth grade Tweek wasn’t allowed to be in the classroom during current events discussion because he tended to get so paranoid about the latest flu outbreak or the advances in artificial intelligence technology that his worried moans and whimpers distracted the class.

That had been a short while before the worst of it had happened, and Craig remembered with a sense of fondness and sadness that he wouldn’t have anticipated until right now.

The poor guy.

It was funny, he had never felt empathy like this before.

Maybe he should make more of an effort than he was making already. Really.

He opened his front camera and took an impulsive snap. Behind him, Kenny and Clyde were visible sitting and pointing at the stars from the hood of Butters’s car.

 _Im so bored._ He attached the photo to an SMS and sent it off. He didn’t really expect an immediate reply, and was pleasantly surprised to receive one not ten minutes later.

 _Same_.

The attached picture was blurry and black and white. Craig didn’t recognise  it at first. It wasn’t until Bebe came back from her trip to the bathroom (five metres into the woods in that direction) that it clicked.

“Why have you got a picture of the city playground?” she asked, peeping quite rudely over his shoulder.

“No reason.”

He turned off his screen and slipped his phone into his pocket. He would try and reply later, when he had more privacy.

That was about the time he got his first wine cooler from Clyde, who sat down to talk to Bebe and for some reason decided to engage him in conversation too, and about three beers after that he was checking his watch and it was only eleven pm. Somehow, he had ended up squeezed between Token and a girl Token seemed interested in courting. A few of the others were deliberating over whether or not to light the fireworks. The sky was clear and the surface of the pond glittered in a way which seemed in soft focus, and it was a little more chilly now than it had been that afternoon so Craig was glad that he had worn warm clothes despite the critical gaze of Kyle Broflovski. Unfortunately, while Kyle was sitting a little bit away from the group, cross legged with Butters on the hood of the Stocthes car and sharing a bottle of doctor pepper, Craig couldn’t very easily rub it in his t-shirt and rolled jeans wearing face. The aggressive-defensive thought was there however, and that was really what counted.

God, he couldn’t imagine living a life like Kyle’s, so miserable when his other half wasn’t there. Or maybe he could – it would probably be very similar to Craig’s current life except for times when the hypothetical other half of his was around he _wouldn’t_ be miserable. So in that sense, he still couldn’t imagine it, but he became grimly aware that this was because he couldn’t really imagine another person making him so happy.

His mood slid a little lower, and he pressed his bottom lip against the edge of the can of beer he was holding. The bitter smell of beer never had appealed to him, but he had learned to ignore the taste to drink comfortably by now so it didn’t matter. Oh man, now he was thinking about the last time he had gotten drunk at Clyde’s birthday party and gotten in a fight with the next door neighbour. The corners of his lips curled wryly as he remembered waking up the next morning with severe facial bruising. The other guy had to be sent to the emergency dental office with a missing molar.

Good times.

“Oi. Are you sure you should be drinking dude?”

Token jabbed him, pulling him out of his thoughts and back to the present, where the girl Token had been talking to a few moments earlier had drifted away to talk to Kenny, and Craig was left alone sitting on the picnic table next to his rich friend. The light of Token’s phone screen lit up his features as he checked his messages.

“Huh? I’m fine. What happened to the girl…?”

“Oh. She said she her favourite video game was MSPaint so I sent her Kenny’s way.” He pulled a face, and Craig groaned quietly. “Call me picky, but I want a girlfriend who can at least have a game of Mario kart with me sometime.”

“… you can’t just pawn your rejects off on Kenny, you asshole.”

“He’s not that bothered.”

No, of course he’s not. But Craig couldn’t think of any way to explain why the idea of token doing so made him unhappy so he kept quiet, thinking a little more and watching with glazed eyes as Jimmy helped Clyde sort through the box of fireworks in Token’s boot. Their small gathering had become a small rabble in the last couple of hours, their voices loud and carrying over the quiet pond side. It was slowly starting to give Craig a headache.

“Are we having fireworks soon?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“How soon?”

“Probably around midnight. Why, do you have somewhere to go?”

Craig couldn’t help his mind, and the memory of his warm bed and his quiet bedroom which it conjured. The transparency of his expression did not escape Token. He sighed heavily and turned off the screen of his phone.

“You’ve been acting so weird lately man. Is Bebe spooking you?”

“What? No!” Craig hadn’t noticed himself acting any different than usual. “I mean, yeah. But that’s not that big of a deal. I’ll get used to her hovering around sometime right?”

“I tried to convince her not to try you on, you know.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence, man.”

“Hey! You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’re either pissed about Bebe moving in on you, or you’re not, and until right now I got the feeling you weren’t so I told her I thought she should probably back off. Don’t go changing your tune halfway through.”

“You know she probably thought you were trying to win her back.”

“Oh god no! I’m way over Bebe now. Don’t worry!” he grinned, and his teeth were perfect. So were Craig’s, but Craig’s were the result of many painful years of orthodontic work. Token’s were just a fortunate boon of genetics.

“I’m not worried. Look, you aren’t going to be pissed if I leave early are you? I’m really bored.”

He wanted to go somewhere quiet and think for a bit. About Bebe, and about his friends, and about how for some reason he couldn’t put his finger on he couldn’t help but feel oddly isolated and lonely, even though everyone around him was friendly and energised.

Token frowned and shook his head just a little.

“Nah. But you better go now before anyone else notices. They might try and stop you.”

Craig nodded and pulled himself to his feet.

“Mind if I take a few beers?”

He thought he would take a brief wander through the forest on his way home and message Tweek some. Hopefully, in silence and darkness he would find clarity enough to have a meaningful conversation. Or at least, he would have privacy enough to talk about how disenchanted he was, and not be judged by Bebe or his association of over-zealous and somewhat shallow friends.

He took three cans of ice cold beer from Clyde’s cooler and slipped them into a hammock made from the bottom of his shirt, And when no one was looking he found the path that wound through trees back to the main road toward the town centre. He disappeared quite easily into the dark.

…

_If you go by the playground on your way home, come say hello._

Craig stared at the message for a few seconds, standing alone in the middle of a deserted suburban road, the hair on the nape of his neck prickling like it prickled those nights he watched the empty streets outside from in the store, and he thought _how could I have forgotten how creepy it is outside at night_? Besides the chilly cones of light cast by spindly streetlamps, there were only stars to light his path back home.

He estimated that at full speed and not allowing a five minute beer break about half way, he was still a good twenty minutes walk from his house. The playground in question was only five minutes in a slightly out of the way direction. He felt a bizarre coolness in the base of his stomach when he considered going by there to see if Tweek was being serious or having a joke, or if this was all just some twisted and fucked up plot that would end with him sewn ass to mouth with a stranger. Maybe this whole time, Tweek had been luring him into a false sense of security. After all, a clear, dark summer night like this would be the perfect time to turn on him and make him pay for all the years of damage high school bullying must have done to his psyche.

In the distance, Craig heard fireworks being set off at humble family barbecues and gatherings that merit more than a box of sparklers and a bonfire. They were the first he had heard all evening but surely they were the last of the celebratory batch – the pond was too far away from town for the sound of earlier fireworks to carry. For some reason, and much to his relief, the unmistakeable sounds of other living humans being awake and active at this hour brought him a swell of confidence. He decided he would go meet Tweek after all. It wasn’t like he couldn’t fight the guy if he tried anything funny.

Maybe that was the ghost of the alcohol still in his system. The same ghost which made his legs feel sort or rubbery and his palms kind of sweaty, and he wasn’t drunk but certainly his previous drinks had helped take the sharp edges off his body and he felt quite cosy in the confides of his skin, today.

 _Ok_ , he messaged back, with slow and deliberate typing. _Where are you exactly?_

_I’m sitting on tip of the slide. You couldn’t miss me if you tried._

This proved true.

Almost as soon as Craig was within spotting distance of the slightly fuzzy and shadowy shapes he recognised as the playground, he saw him- a slightly too large and naturalistic lump perched atop the kindergarten sized slide. There was little light from the street lamps that illuminated the playground, and so his eyes had to adjust as he drew near and edged through the gate in the chicken wire fencing. The houses next door had darkened windows, and overhead the stars leaked silvery light over the finer details of children’s playthings like the eyes on the rocking dolphin and the wave patterns on the side of the plastic slide he was approaching.

“Hey.” Tweek’s voice sounded clearer than usual, and louder in the dark than it did in the light of the coffee store. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Why aren’t you at work?” Craig asked him, extracting the cans of beer from his shirt and lining them up carefully at the foot of the slide.

“I told you. Dad is working tonight. He doesn’t want to pay holiday pay. Jesus Christ.”

“I thought that was just for me?”

Tweek shrugged, and Craig felt the gesture more than he saw it.

“No. You might want to move those, I’m coming down.”

“Nah,” Craig glanced at the beer cans sitting on the slide end in a neat row. “I don’t know why I took them, I didn’t want them.”

“Where did you get them from?” Tweek asked him, sliding down the slide and ploughing straight through the row, so that the cans all thunked mutedly to the bark-covered ground.

“Token.”

“Are the others still at the pond then?”

“Uh huh. What are you doing out here anyway? Have you been out here all evening alone?”

“Yup.” Tweek stood up and Craig had to take a step backwards, because they were very nearly nose to nose and for some reason, that made him quite uneasy. “There’s no one at home and I get nervous when I’m home alone.”

“… But its dark out. What if there are murderers or something out here? Oh shit, not that I want to try and work you up or anything.”

Craig realized after he said it that his confusion at why Tweek would prefer dark, open spaces to the safe cloistered environment that was a home free from parental interference was probably, while justified, rude, and that his way of phrasing his response probably wasn’t ideal given Tweek’s disposition.

The other boy, who was now close enough for his neat double breasted coat and thick scarf to be visible, screwed up his face and Craig felt his skin prickle.

“It’s not so bad outside. The stars can see me and so I feel safe.”

Craig almost laughed, because everyone knew that the stars couldn’t see anyone and Tweek was probably just a fruitcake, but he let it slide because man, Tweek’s company was such a relief. He hadn’t even realised how tense he had been on his walk until he was standing next to another person and feeling their presence. The faded smell of cigarette smoke on his coat as he bent to pick up the beer cans and press them back into Craig’s hands was like the first sensory experience he had ever had.

“There’s more room up on the fort if you want to sit down.”

Craig hadn’t climbed on a playground for over nine years. All the same, he followed dutifully and he didn’t even complain when he had to drag himself up a miniature rock wall to get up there. Tweek made the climb lithely and easily, and once he was positioned he turned back down to hold out his hands and offer to relieve Craig of the beer cans.

“You can have one if you want.” Craig told him, all the muscles in his body straining to get him up on the thing. Tweek shook his head, and brushed his hand over his forehead. It was then Craig noticed he had his bangs tied in a ponytail. It would have been cute if Craig could have seen a little better. A strange, complicated bubble of thought lifted too the back of his mind and Kenny was in there somewhere. What would Kenny be up too about now anyway? Probably fucking that girl Token hadn’t wanted. Why was he even thinking that? It was unrelated to the matter at hand.

“I can’t drink alcohol. Well I can, but I don’t because there’s a chance that it might react with me and kill me and I’m not ready too take that chance.”

“Ever cautious. I’ll have one.”

Craig took a can and cracked it open. He was halfway through drinking it, gazing up at the sky and lost in abstract, empty thought, before he realised that he had nothing to say. And Tweek sitting in silence beside him had nothing to say either.

…

Craig gave Tweek a gentle shake to wake him, and the boy rolled onto his back and his eyes fluttered open as though he hadn’t been asleep but just pretending. Craig withdrew his hand swiftly, as Tweek sat upright.

“What’s the time?” he croaked, glancing at the horizon where the sun was just starting to leak yellow rays and long shadows over the mountaintops.

“Five twenty. I have to go home soon and sleep. I think Kenny wants to come over this afternoon.” He held up his phone, which Kenny had text at three am saying he wanted to come over, and Craig had had to insist he wait until at least after midday. Tweek blinked at him, his lips chapped and his under eyes bruised, and his nostrils flared as he drew a deep cool breath into his lungs.

“Walk me home? I feel kind of funny.”

“What kind of funny?”

“Faint. I always feel funny when I sleep outside. Maybe I’m coming down with something. Oh no. Oh god, no what if I die?” a look of panic passed over his face, and Craig’s sluggish mind clenched and tried to resist it as best as possible because he wasn’t up to dealing with that right now.

“Oh no you don’t. Don’t loose your shit, it’s too early in the morning for this. Have a beer.”

There was still one beer left. Tweek looked at it and shook his head fiercely.

“No way man. Not risking it.”

“Fine. Continue living in a state of constant anxiety then.”

Craig pulled the tab and downed a big mouthful. The liquid inside was cold because the temperature was cold, but Craig could feel already that it would be hot later. Maybe even too hot. Tweek watched him do it and he narrowed his eyes, just a little bit.

“I never said this last night because I didn’t want to seem rude, but I didn’t know you drunk.”

“Everyone drinks, Tweek. Except for you. But you smoke instead so go figure that I guess.”

“… Smoking is irrelevant, man. Alcohol probably won’t agree with me.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

“I’m serious Craig. I don’t want to accidentally kill myself or anything.”

“No one accidentally dies from alcohol. Humans can drink alcohol no problem. It’s a thing.”

And then Tweek said something Craig probably should have expected, but wasn’t entirely prepared for.

“Maybe I’m not human.” He said simply, and his voice was so matter of fact it made Craig’s blood turn cold. “Maybe I’m an alien. Maybe I’m a ghost. I can’t be sure of any of that and nether can you.”

Craig tried to laugh it off, but it wasn’t so easy to do when the boy sitting next to him only half illuminated by  the fingers of the rising sun was being so goddamned serious.


	10. Crumpled tinfoil hat that went through the laundry by mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i just want to write porn but i have all this plot i have to write first and its the WORST

Kenny peeled his parka off when he came inside, and underneath his long sleeved tee was thin with wear and faded, the greyish colour black took on after it had been washed about two hundred times. Craig kicked his dirty jeans under the bed, and gestured for Kenny to sit in his desk chair, but the guy was no idiot and he made himself comfortable on the end of the bed instead, a smug grin turning up the corners of his lips.

“I want the comfy spot.”

“Okay. Whatever.”

Craig took his spot sitting on the computer chair instead.

It wasn’t often Kenny McCormick bothered to come over to Craig’s. It wasn’t often _anyone_ came over to Craig’s. But Craig rationalised making an exception for Kenny because he figured that his own house wasn’t great so sometimes, and he probably needed a place to go that wasn’t falling down around him. But the problem with Kenny was that if anyone gave him an inch he took a mile, and he next thing that happens is he starts giving out their numbers to Bebe Stevens.

“So! We never got a chance to have a chat last night you know!”

Craig shrugged, and wanted to tell him that that was because Kenny was too busy following his dick to pay any attention to what Craig might have been doing, but he held his tongue and instead let Kenny carry on.

“She’s still into you then?” he asked, and Craig avoided looking at him just in case his eyes gave something away.

“Yup.”

“Have you fucked her yet?”

“No. and I’m not going to.”

Kenny huffed and let himself fall backward onto the mattress, as if that answer had physically pained him.

“Dude. Virgin as fuck. I got laid twice last night.”

Craig felt himself bristle, and he spun in his chair so as to look at his guinea pig cage instead of Kenny’s shape on the mattress. His pets were shuffling around in the hay, making those snuffling little noises that guinea pigs made, and distractedly he threaded a fingertip through the cage bars.

“What’s wrong with being a virgin?”

“I bet you’re like Kyle. No fucking before marriage and only for the purpose of procreation. Straight edge goody two braces.”

“I don’t have braces anymore.”

“You know what I mean.”

Craig sighed and slumped forward onto his desk. Fuck this guy! Seriously, fuck this guy and his stupid one track mind. The worst thing about it was that sometimes, Craig really, really _wanted_ for him to break character for him, just like he did for people like Butters Stotch. Ask him about something other than his sex life one or twice, was that too much to ask? Because always around the peripheral of Kenny there was this personality hiding, a sympathetic kind of personality with a sharp mind to back it up, and it’s the exact kind of person Craig could really benefit from having around. But no. Instead he got horny, trashy, simple Kenny, and Kenny had a nice face and a pleasant vibe but he seemed so papery and shallow sometimes. Like a fantasy boy, a daydream. And Craig couldn’t help but feel a desperate frustration when they were alone together because… well…

Hoping the Kenny might surprise him was like beating his head against a wall repeatedly. He knew it was bad for him but he couldn’t stop. And it was embarrassing. Sometimes, he wondered if Kenny knew it, and just made a point of trying to wind him up.

“I know.”

They fell into silence, and finding his efforts to interest Mojo and Donnie in his finger futile, he gave up.

After a while, he wondered why Kenny wasn’t saying anything. When he turned his chair around, he found the answer.

“Why do you have texts on here from Tweek Tweak?”

“Dude! What the fuck!” he leapt from his seat and grappled his phone out of Kenny’s hand like he had just had a hot poker thrust up his asshole. He knew Kenny was notorious for invading other peoples personal effects, and he knew his phone was sitting on his bedside table as usual, but he hadn’t thought to put two and two together. His mistake. “You can’t just go through peoples cellphones like that!”

“Why not? I do it all the time with Kyle and Stan.”

“Because its _private._ ”

“Uh huh. Super private. ‘can you please grab an extra couple of cream canisters before you come in to work today?” he pushed craig off him and sat up straight with his legs crossed underneath him. “Sounds kinky.”

Oh Jesus. He would think that.

Craig felt himself flush, and a bizarre and frantic need to clarify that him and Tweek were nothing more than acquaintances filled him to the brim. Stupid thoughts flickered through his head, about making sure Kenny knew he was still single and not at all a secretive, lying creeper who was concealing his whole sex life from his friends, and that desperate aching feeling that if Kenny thought Craig was doing weird kinky stuff with Tweek, then Kenny would start seeing him differently and treat him differently and that whole thing could work out for better but also it could work out for worse.

He heard himself blurting the truth before he could stop it.

“I work at the coffee shop!”

Kenny held up his hands in surrender.

“I believe you.” He hesitated, and a look of confusion passed over his features. “Wait, what?”

Craig wanted to hit himself in the face.

“I work at the coffee shop.” He repeated. “Tweek Bros coffee shop. Please don’t tell the others they will laugh until they shit.”

Kenny stared at him with the grave expression of someone who knew all too well that this was true.

“… Why the fuck would you take a job at _Tweek_ _bros_?”

Craig shrugged, sat down on the bed, and crossed his legs underneath him as well. Face to face they sat, and with their knees touching Craig felt himself grow very twitchy. Kenny’s body warmth was tangible through the denim of their jeans.  

“Dad made me. Why else would I?”

“What do you _do_ there? Floor cleaning? Coffee brewing?”

“Uh… mostly?” Craig couldn’t help it, for some reason the urge to tell him was overwhelming, and on some level he suspected it was bound to get a rise. “Mostly I just babysit Tweek. Make sure he doesn’t… have an episode I guess.”

Kenny’s eyes narrowed, and he had long full lashes that made him look like a doll in the right light. They were dark, like his eyebrows, and undoubtedly the suspicion they held reminded Craig of his workmate but this time, it made his stomach turn. He tensed his jaw and tried to ignore it.

“You must have your hands full.” Kenny commented, and the hair on Craig’s arms prickled when he realised that he was slipping into serious mode. “That guys a wreck.”

“Actually, he’s not that bad. He’s just kind of shy.”

“Hmm.” Kenny pressed his lips together in thought. “Is he very friendly?”

“He’s uh…” He wanted to say that actually, Tweek was one of the nicest people he knew, but he didn’t want to give Kenny further reason to think they were… involved. Because he would. That was the first thing he always jumped to the second he saw two people interacting. “He’s polite I guess.”

“There’s something off about that guy.  He has a weird… feeling? I dunno how to describe it.” Kenny let his hands rest on his knees, and Craig noticed how close they were to his legs. He had short nails, blunt but not bloody like Tweek’s were sometimes.  Craig tried to stop drawing similarities between the two of them. It was weirding him out.

“Seriously though, you can’t tell _anyone_ or I will kill you.”

“Oh no. Don’t kill me Craig, I’m scared to die.”

“I’m not really going to kill you, you fucking dumbshit.”

“Oh yeah? You know if you let me live and I can make it worth your while…” He walked his fingers across his knee and started creeping them up the side of Craig’s thigh. Craig shivered and pushed his hand away.

“Don’t do that.”

“Damn. Fine. I’ll get you off some day, Virgin. You know I will.”

Craig shook his head and pulled himself reluctantly off the bed. He wouldn’t have it. That would be a meaningless foray for Kenny, sure, but it would be the final cruel straw for him and he knew it.

He would die himself, many times, before he dared to ever let that happen.

…

Tweek was agitated. He could tell because almost every twenty minutes Craig had to scold him for plucking at the hair at the nape of his neck and letting the stands fall onto the countertop – something which screamed nervous tic but Craig had never seen before and hoped he never had to see again.

“Why do you keep doing that?” he asked, after the eighth time around. Tweek gnawed at his bottom lip and swept all of his pulled hair into the palm of his hand. 

“No idea. I’m on new meds, it’s making me kind of edgy.”

“Watching you tug your hair out is making me kind of edgy. Cant you like… bite your fingers or something instead?”

Tweek rolled his eyes and pushed himself up off the till where he was leaning. “You want something to drink?”

“Sure.” He returned his attention to his computer game, before remembering quite suddenly. “Oh yeah, is it okay if I have next Friday off work? Token is having a party and I’m supposed to go.”

Tweek was too busy emptying a bag of coffee beans into the grinder to look at him, but he did nod in affirmation.

“I will ask dad,” he said easily, rolling the top of the bag back down and putting it back on the shelf under the sink. “But I don’t see why not.” He straightened up again and Craig heard his knees cracking from his spot on the sofa. “Oh, hell. Hey. After this do you want to come outside with me? I need to uh…” he made a gesture with his hand to indicate smoking. “I feel like shit this evening.”

“… I still can’t believe you sometimes Tweek.” He forced himself not to smile and looked down at the glowing laptop screen instead. For some reason he had tied to bring it into work today, and he was unsurprised to find that it was refusing to co-operate as usual. “Its all about the drugs. All the time.”

“… You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

“No its okay. I’ll come. You know, I don’t think people would believe me if I told them you’re a smoker. Like the cool kids.”

“You cant tell people that! You wouldn’t dare!”

Craig decided not to tell him he was right just yet.

…

“You’re on candid camera.”

Craig held his phone in Tweek’s face, and while his facebook photos may have been unflattering he was certainly a guy with a face for the recording camera because even with his bruised under eyes and the new band aid on his forehead he looked handsome, and Craig liked the way his fragile lips looked as he pursed them around the end of his smoke and tried to push the phone away with one hand.

“They say when you take someone’s picture you steal a part of their soul.”

“Who says that.”

“Lots of people. I do.”

‘Do you believe it?”

“Nn.. I don’t know.” Tweek exhaled a stream of smoke, and Craig leaned his head on his knee, still filming his friend and watching the moonlight passing over the details of his face. They were sitting on the curb outside the store. The night was warm, and even though it was almost one it was very bright, because every star in the galaxy seemed to have congregated to see them and the moon was huge and glowing like the silver burning slowly in the pupils of Tweek’s eyes.

“You don’t smoke do you?” he offered Craig the cigarette, and Craig denied it, because he’d never tried smoking and he didn’t want to end up hooked.

“Nope. I’m just going to ask you questions and wait for you to say something way lame on camera.”

“Don’t ask me questions. I’m no good at questions.”

“If a turtle looses its shell, is it naked or homeless?”

“Jesus Christ.”

Tweek buried his head between his knees, and Craig (quite unabashedly) grinned.

“No answer?”

“Fuck off.” Came the muffled reply.

It was hard not to laugh at him, but Craig bit it back and chewed his bottom lip, racking his brain for something that would get him to say something hilarious for the purpose of posting it on YouTube.

“Tell me about yourself.” Craig invited him, and Tweek lifted his head up enough too give a deadpan look too the camera.

“No.”

“Fun hater.”

“You can’t take advantage of highly strung teenagers for profit.”

“Who says it’s for profit?”

“Everything anyone does if for profit. Phase one, phase two, profit. That’s the business model that works.”

Craig didn’t know _where_ he got that idea from, but it was almost stupid enough to be good so if he didn’t say anything better than that Craig would just post that clip instead.

“Why are you dong this?” Tweek asked him.

“I’m bored.”

“It’s bothering me. Can you not?”

His voice was concerningly serious. Craig huffed, and against his wishes he turned off the camera on his phone.

“Better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He took another drag on his smoke, and they drifted into silence. Craig was thinking about how much longer he would have to work this night shift before he got his new computer, something he hadn’t thought about or a while because he had grown distracted by the experience of having made a new friend, when Tweek spoke again. And it was a surprising thing too bring up. Craig felt the mood immediately grow somber.

“Hey, uh… You do know why I smoke, right?”

“… You have a genetic predisposition toward addictive behaviour?”

“Well, that too. But it’s a comfort thing mostly. Every day I have to face the world with the fear that the next person who looks at me is going to hate me and doing something I have to concentrate on like this helps.”

“…Hate you?” Craig frowned, “What for?”

“No reason. Existing.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, and what he was thinking was decidedly clear in the furrow of his brow and the concentration in his eyes. “If I can’t justify it rationally I make stuff up. Maybe I looked at them too aggressively. Maybe I have an offensive hairstyle. Maybe they’ve noticed that I have a pimple on my chin or my nose or smack in the middle of my forehead.”

“Is that why you wear band aids on your face?”

“Yeah. Well, I usually scratch them first. Blood everywhere. I’ve always been a shocker for picking scabs.”

Craig hasn’t heard Tweek use ‘I’ statements all that much except in apologies. It was an interesting change of pace even if the direction of the conversation is starting to make him feel sort of uncomfortable? Embarrassed? Was this too personal a thing for Tweek to be divulging? Craig felt a little like he was peeping tom here, gazing into the recesses of Tweek’s mind while his guard was down, and it seemed dishonest.

“… Okay?”

Tweek finished his cigarette and tossed the butt into the gutter.

“Smoking makes me feel normal. It makes the world stop bullying me while I do it and it’s easier to pretend I don’t see things which scare me everywhere I look.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

There was a blush creeping up the back of Craig’s neck, and strange feelings of shame were stirring in the pit of his stomach.

“Because you want to know.” Tweek told him softly. “I see you looking at me like you are trying to figure me out. But unless I tell you it’s never going to happen.” His eyes fluttered closed, and he looked so peaceful, and so very, desperately sad. “And I _want_ you to know. I actually really like you.”

“… I really like you too I guess.”

But even though he had been thinking it for a while, the words seemed very weighted now. Like a promise that he wasn’t entirely sure he could keep.

Tweek cracked open his eyes and smiled.  


	11. Sitting on the toilet playing solitaire on your iPhone 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a reeeeeeeeeeeeally self indulgent chapter today - its a bit longer than usual as well.

He sat down heavily on the edge of the planter box and cursed loudly when he almost lost his balance - the hot coffee he was holding sloshed over the edge of the cup and burnt his in the way that temperate coffee brewed at Tweek bros did not. It was eleven am in the morning and Craig was tired as hell. Token and Clyde were only half way through looking in all the suit shops and men’s fashion stores for outfits to flatter them at Token’s upcoming party, and quite typically Craig had been procrastinating on his acknowledgement of the event to the point where it was only two days away and again, he had no clean clothes to wear. But like hell he was going to spend his hard earned pay check on new ones.

“This shirt is gay as hell.” Clyde said, pulling out the button up shirt he had just paid thirty dollars for from the forever twenty one men’s bag next to Craig. “Do you have some casual jeans I could borrow to wear with it?”

Craig was too busy blowing on his coffee and gazing blankly at the camoed mannequins in the window of hunting and fishing warehouse to realise that Clyde was talking to him.

“Huh?”

“Jeans. Slouchy ones maybe? I need something casual I can wear with this so I don’t look like a massive douchebag.”

“No way. Your ass is too big.”

Craig returned his attention to the window displays and Clyde huffed indignantly. Token, meanwhile, was far too occupied trying to decide if he liked the black trainers he had just purchased more than the two-toned dress shoes that American Mens was trying to insist had just came in fashion.

Craig didn’t care. He really didn’t fucking care even a little bit. The harsh mall lights were giving him a mild headache and he was wondering quite acutely why it was he had even agreed to come out shopping with these two. They were a couple of image obsessed weirdos if Craig had ever met any, and doubtless they put more effort individually into making sure they spent huge quantities of money and effort on looking fashionable than Wendy, Bebe, or any of the other girls in school put together.  Craig thought that once again, this was one of those things he had just agreed to tag along to because he had been too tired to realise what he was being asked. An unfortunate habit to be developing, and one he would have to keep an eye on in future. Or maybe he had agreed to come because he had been under the impression there would be more than just the three of them? Maybe, in his sleep deprived state, someone had mentioned Kenny, and Craig had jumped right on in to whatever bandwagon he thought that particular person might be included in.

Jesus. That was even more grim. Living in a state of perpetual tiredness and boredom was dangerous for a person with thoughts he didn’t want to talk about and acknowledge – it lowered a guys guard and made him more vulnerable to approach, and no wonder Tweek was so strung out all the time because if he had trouble sleeping he must always feel like this – weighed down and wary and not quite ready to trust his own judgement in case he embarrasses himself. Or worse, ended up going to the mall with Token and Clyde to buy clothing.

“Man, did you get up miserable this morning or what?” Token gave Craig a very suspicious look, and Craig met his eyes as defiantly as he possibly could.  “And why are you drinking coffee? You don’t usually drink coffee.”

“I’m delightfully spontaneous. Didn’t you know?”

Token, apparently did not know. And neither did Clyde. They exchanged meaningful looks and Craig felt his eyes narrow, his defences rise.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Token said, helping Clyde stuff his shirt back into his plastic bag and ushering them in the direction of the party hire store. The list in his pocket of equipment to get and things to do was hardly getting any shorter. Craig had been stupid to think that he would be home by midday.

The death march around the party shop would have been more enjoyable if Craig was interested in glitter or napkins, but by the time they left he had finished his coffee and in all honestly was feeling no better than he had before he had purchased it. He was very close to saying that fuck this, he wanted to go home, when thy were interrupted by a small party that Craig didn’t recognise at first, because they were moving in a group and it was rare that Bebe and Stan Marsh would willingly occupy the same ten square metres of space at the same time.

“Oh hey you guys! Fancy seeing you here!” Bebe pulled Craig aside outside of the sports equipment store, her arms weighted down with bags and her shoes easily bringing her up to the same height as Craig in his sneakers. Her company seemed sombre, Wendy in a neat cardigan and smiling in a way that didn’t meet her eyes when she looked at Token, and Stan obviously dis-interested and texting someone (Craig knew who) when he thought Wendy wasn’t looking. “We were just looking at stuff to wear to Token’s house tomorrow. What are you guys doing?”

Craig felt himself flush when Token and Clyde fell silent, and he could feel them giving him looks of interest and awe like he was some exhibition in a zoo and his next actions were of utmost personal interest to them. Which they should not be. He coughed and tried to become fascinated in the movie poster behind Bebe’s right shoulder, something with Adam Sandler in it and probably not worth the crappy poster paper it was printed on, to give her the impression of chilly indifference when he replied.

“Same. They are, anyway.” He cocked his head in the direction of his friends, and Stan glanced upward to check if ‘they’ might have included Kenny today. It did not, so he went back to sending messages on his phone. Craig could see Wendy’s eyes flickering backward to watch him do it, and oh it was actually somewhat beneficial to his mood to see that she looked _pissed_. He was going to get torn a new one later, but regrettably Wendy was one of those people discreet enough to not start arguments with her boyfriend in public.

God almighty, hung the thoughts at the back of his mind, what a miserable way to live. If he _did_ end up with Bebe, would they some day become one of those couples who hide their arguments away because to have them publically would ruin the crisp and perfect image other people have of their relationship? Why doesn’t someone just kill him now?

“You’re going to be there right?” Bebe asked, and he jumped when her hand touched his lower arm as though she was trying to grab his hand. “You just snuck away from me at the pond, I was scared I’d done something to annoy you.” Her eyelashes fluttered, and Craig’s stomach knotted. It had never occurred to him how _close_ a person had to be to him for him to see their eyelashes. It was kind of intimate, and regrettably enough when it came to lonesome and stand-offish Craig, ‘intimate’ oftentimes overlapped with ‘sexy’.

“You’re fine.” He said, and the words fell like globs of mud from his mouth and hit the ground with an unpleasant thunk. “And I think I will be. I’m feeling kind of sick today.”

He practically _heard_ Token’s eyebrows fly up in surprise. Fortunately, he didn’t say anything out loud.

“Oh…” Bebe looked a little disappointed, but she recovered quickly and shrugged her shoulders in a way that indicated she didn’t much care. “Well, Wendy and I will definitely be there. Right Wendy?”

And now, Craig realised with an unpleasant jolt, those sharp and clever eyes Wendy used to dissect men had turned to him, and they were such a clear blue they made him feel like he was looking into mirrors when he looked into them.

“We will.” She said neatly. “I’m driving there early, because I have to leave again at eight. Bebe might need a lift you know.”

Craig was certain that was a hint. He swallowed and told her shortly.

“I don’t drive. See you later then.”

And before he embarrassed himself, or Wendy tried to subject him to that terrifying best friend screening process that most of the girls in their high school class tended to do, he was striding away toward Animania pet emporium and Token and Clyde were hurrying after in an effort to keep up his pace.

“What the fuck dude?” Token hissed, trying to grab Craig’s sweater to slow him walking. “You’re sick?”

“No.” he said shortly. “I don’t know. I don’t feel so good. Maybe I should go to a bathroom.”

Exhaustion was making the shop signs around him an off colour purple and green, like badly damaged VHS tape when you put it in the player. The background music seemed to double in volume and then wane again with the washing regularity of waves on a shore. He was pretty sure that this was about as close to passing out he was ever going to get, because if he got any more light headed he was going to float away.

“I’m really fucking tired you guys.”

Craig decided he might pass on the next evening festivities after all.

 

…

 

 _How’s the party_?

Tweek text him at half past eight, and Craig rolled onto his back trying to remember who he was and what he was doing before he had slipped into dreamland and forgotten, for a little while, the stress and frustrations of his usual everyday life.

The sun was dropped low on the horizon, a tiny sliver of orange peering above ragged mountain ranges, and his bedroom was hot with pink light and the trapped heat of the day. He could hear his pets snuffling in their cage and next door, his sister was watching a movie or something. He wasn’t entirely sure.

 _Oh that,_ he text back, his fingers having trouble with the touch screen. _I really didn’t want to go, so instead I’m staying home._

He let his phone slip out of his hands and he sighed. By now Clyde would just be arriving at Token’s house. Bebe would have been dropped of by her parents half an hour ago. Stan would pick up Kyle and Kenny and probably Cartman, in his shitty blue Toyota corolla, and Kyle would ride shotgun with the bottle of wine he had taken from his parents cupboards. They would stop by the liquor store so Stan could pick up two bottles of Jim Beam and whatever booze orders Token had otherwise placed because his uncles friend happened to run the place. Other students, his peers, would be arriving soon in drips and in droves.

And here he was cozied between comforters and pillows, and he was so incredibly relieved at his decision that he found himself grinning to the empty room, because Craig tended to get brawly when he drunk anyway and people at parties always did that horrible thing where they tried to talk to him. Maybe later he could play some minecraft. Watch some reruns of red racer. Whatever he chose to do the night was looking up and he couldn’t wait to get into it. He might even turn off his phone, so no-one could bother him by asking where he could be.

He had almost drifted off to sleep again when his phone went off.

_Really? Dad gave me the night off because you weren't coming in :O ...Do you want to come over?_

Of course, he was so surprised to receive such an invitation he sat bolt upright, and the duvet slid off his bare upper half to settle around his waist.

_You mean to your house?_

_Yah._ Came the reply. And then five seconds later. _you really really really don’t have to if you don’t want to, I wont be upset. Oh god, im sorry I asked._

Craig felt his lips turn up at the corner.

_How long did it take you to work up the courage to ask me that?_

And it was another long wait, at least ten minutes, for the next response. He pulled himself out of bed and started hunting for a fresh pair of socks.

… _about half an hour_.

Half an hour. Imagine spending _half an hour_ just trying to ask too spend time with a friend. It was an otherworldly concept to Craig, who usually just text people on his way out the door. ‘Im coming over.’ Was his usual line. Or ‘meet outside toms rhinoplasty twenty minuites’. Usually, he didn’t even care if he got a reply.  In some wacky Tweek-y sort of a way, it was sweet that he had put so much energy into asking. But in another way it also made Craig feel kind of guilty for the ease with which he treated most or all of his everyday social interactions. The smile faded from his lips, and he felt his skin crawl uncomfortably, remembering all those times he had said or done anything horrible to or about Tweek.

 _Kk,_ He replied. _Give me half an hour. Same address as you used to have?_

Tweek sent him a response almost immediately.

_See you then._

…

The Tweak’s lived in a fairly tidy little house not unlike all the other houses in the street, and when Craig knocked on the door it only took Tweek’s mom a few seconds to open it. She seemed surprised to see him, and at first Craig was offended but then he realised that she probably hadn’t seen him since he was ten years old. He gave her the polite smile he had reserved for adults, and informed her that he was here to see her son _._

“Tweek invited you here?”

“Uh huh.”

She looked somewhat bewildered by this revelation, as though the likelihood of someone like Tweek inviting anyone anywhere was too slim for her to comprehend.

“Tweek,” She called over her shoulder, in that gentle, soft voice that was not at all like Tweek’s tense chatter. “Dovey, there’s someone here for you?”

He appeared at the door thirty seconds later, in jeans and a green plaid shirt.

“Oh. Hi.” He ushered his mother, over whom he towered, out of the doorway, and beckoned Craig inside “You’re kind of earlier than I thought you would be.”

“Shorter walk than I remembered.”

Craig kicked his shoes of lazily when he made his way through the door.

“… Are you boys heading upstairs?”

Tweek’s mom looked a little bit like she wanted some explanation on what was going on, and Craig wasn’t sure why this surprised him because he knew that Tweek never had people over anyway. His host nodded, and Craig noticed the way he kept his hands tucked neatly into his back pockets. The way he tried not to make eye contact for longer that two or three seconds, if he could help it.

“We might just watch a movie? Maybe? You don’t mind watching a movie? ‘Cause we can do something else if you want?”

Craig shrugged and pulled down the zipper in the front of his hoodie.

“Movies are cool.”

He followed dutifully when Tweek nodded and lead the way awkwardly up the stairs. He had a weird gait that didn’t really suit climbing vertically, and this gave him a comical sort of look as Craig watched him. Did he realise this too, or was this something he had had about him for so long he remained unaware? Craig didn’t really want to ask.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms, and a bathroom, but Tweek was an only child (Craig forgot that some people actually had the fortune of this situation) and seeing as his parents bedroom was downstairs, he seemed to have laid claim to most or all of the upstairs space. The décor was modern-mild – cream carpet and light walls, and framed pictures of black and white photographs breaking the monotony. It smelled very strongly of lavender and coffee and the two smells were odd together, but not not-complementary.

“Relaxing.” Craig commented, noting the vase of potpourri which sat on a bookshelf next to the bathroom door. Tweek pulled his shoulders into a shrug and directed him into his bedroom. The one he used predominantly for sleeping, not the spare one which functioned mostly as a lounge and gaming room (he remembered that from way back when the whole grade used to have sleepovers here.)

“When I was eleven, my mom said that lavender would keep gnomes away.”

“Did it work?” Craig shuffled into Tweek’s bedroom and had a brief glance around. Tweek laughed, and closed the door behind them.

“I haven’t seen any gnomes for a long time. I can still hear them though, sometimes. In the walls.”

“What could gnomes _possibly_ want from someone like you Tweek?”

He touched his collarbone lightly and looked somewhat as though he wanted to change the subject.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Craig thought that was probably correct.

Tweek’s bedroom was small-ish and light, decorated with more serene black and white pictures and a few slightly more boyish artefacts – Like the poster with the retro pin up babe on it (something Craig hadn’t been anticipating) and the line of aftershave, deodorant and similar toiletries sitting on top of his set of drawers. There were three dirty coffee mugs lined up carefully on his bedside table, all of them perfectly white and unchipped, and each pen and paperclip on his desk seemed to be in a specially designated place. His books were all aligned and ordered by height on a shelf above his bed - most of them had titles like ‘Encyclopaedia of Deamons’ and ‘The lesser key of Solomon’, but surprisingly there were a couple of Stephen King novels in there too and Craig was intrigued to note that he had a copy of _twilight_ to boot. The window was small but would have allowed for lots of fresh light during daylight hours. There was a bamboo plant in the corner, a stereo on the windowsill,l and on the ceiling, held by shiny silver thumbtacks, a row of multi-coloured flags which fluttered as Tweek loped across the room to draw his curtains. Craig let his messenger bag slide of his shoulder and thunk to the floor. It made quite a noise – he had taken three cans of diet coke out of the fridge before he left because he realised that he hadn’t been drinking all that much of it latterly. He had been having coffee instead.

“Holy shit,” was the first thing he said, and it seemed to make Tweek nervous because he was chewing his bottom lip quite fiercely when he turned around.

“What?”

“It’s so _tidy_.” He felt like a bit of a slob just being there, actually. “I should let you come over and tidy my room sometime. It’s a dump.”

“Ahhhh… I’m sure its not that bad?”

Ah, cute.

He had no idea.

Craig rolled his eyes and pulled his hat off his head. He didn’t think about it, it was just kind of a habit he had developed and it came with being around Tweek with his hat off so many times before now.

“Whatever. It seems bigger than it used to when we were kids.”

“Yeah. Dad repainted it white and it helped I think.”

“What about the spare room? Still have that?”

“Sure. Through there.”

Craig wiggled his eyebrows and went through to check it out.

It wasn’t much of a games room anymore. Tweek seemed to have converted it to a straight up lounge. The space was smaller than his bedroom, but there was enough room to fit a sofa and a medium sized TV, and in one corner a clothes drying rack stood, airing out his Tweek Bros. apron. The middle of the space was broken by a small coffee table, which of course had coffee rings and two dirtied mugs sitting on it, right next to a statue of a fat looking man Craig recognised from all that anime he watched when he was fourteen.

“Why do you have a Buddha statue on your coffee table?”

“Oh, uh, it helps me concerntrate. I think. Calm space visualisation stuff… weird therapy thing…. Ahaha…” He laughed nervously and scratched the back of his neck with those chewed down nails. “That sounds so ridiculous. I’m sorry.”

Craig touched the back of the sofa, a dark blue three seater with a large throw and several cushions on it, and shrugged.

“I was just wondering. It’s like that finding your centre thing right?”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

And it was weird, to see this space that Tweek occupied. It was strange, to have an insight into the interactions he had with his own environment, the one he made himself and the one which embodied _him_. The whole place was forced, it looked like something out of a model home catalogue, and it occurred to Craig that this was how Tweek had learned to operate. How he had been taught to function, just like he had needed to learn muscle control, voice control, and control over those loud, panicking, irrational parts of his brain. In some ways, it was wonderfully inspirational, the way he had managed to learn to structure himself so well, but Craig remembered what Tweek had said about his dealings with the hypnotist and in other ways, the whole thing became very disturbing, and kind of sterile. It made _him_ nervous, the power that the will could have over the nature of a teenaged boy.

Tweek must be, without a doubt, one of the most obstinate people in the world, considering how much resistance he faced every day of his life. And here he had the spotless carpet by which to evaluate his hard work.

“Okay,” Craig said after a while, shaking of his uneasiness as best he could.. “Let’s watch this movie then. You can pick.”

…

Craig ended up picking.

Tweek had an eclectic collection of DVDs in a cabinet under the tv, and much to Craig’s surprise many of them were the sort of thing _designed_ to agitate the nervous, or people with fragile dispositions.

“You like horror movies?”

“Mmm… I love them, but I shouldn’t watch them? It’s complicated.” He shrugged and twisted a thread of hair around his finger. “Same with books … I like weird spooky books too.”

“Yeah, I figured.” 

He pulled a plain white case off the shelf. The title was handwritten on the spine in block letters. _GUINEA PIG II,_ it said in unfamiliar hand. “This looks good. Mind if we…?”

A peculiar expression, like tentative amusement, passed over Tweek’s face.

“… you know what that’s about?”

“Uh, it says right here on the cover.”

He shook his head and plucked the DVD out of Craig’s hand.

“No, bad idea. No. Let’s watch something else. Uh…”

“This one then.” Craig grabbed another DVD and flipped it over to read the back. “I’ve heard of this.”

“It’s not as good as the first one.”

He put _the evil dead_ disk into the DVD drive anyway and slotted the case perfectly back in its place.

“You know, its kind of weird that you watch scary movies.” Craig said, standing up on his knees and shuffling over to the couch. “Considering how… you know.”

“I know, Mom and Dad think it’s stupid as well. Jesus, _I_ think it’s stupid.”

“Uh huh.”

Craig wasn’t sure he thought it was _stupid_. Just kind of unwise. A self inflicted kind of pain.

“Why do you then?” he made himself comfortable on the corner of the sofa, and it was a very squishy sofa, but the upholstery was cold.

“I’m not sure. Maybe… hah.” He smiled sheepishly and avoided Craig’s eye as he hunted for the remote down the back of the couch. “Well, sometimes I think it’s because I’m a masochist. Other times I think it’s because I’m a sadist. Mostly I think it’s because it gives me a _reason_ to be scared. You know. Instead of just being worried about nothing.”

“So you’d rather worry about a machete slinging maniac who may be hiding in the shower cubicle.”

“Uh huh. God yes definitely. At least a machete slinging maniac has a physical boundary. You know, arms, legs… weapons.”

“As opposed to like… the possibility of failing a class and dropping out of school and becoming a homeless crack addict.”

Craig was starting to get the idea.

Tweek gave him a wan smile and switched on the TV.

“You’re pretty smart, Craig.”

Craig felt his ears redden proudly. No one had ever called him _smart_ before. Smart ass, sure. Wise guy. Sarcastic piece of shit. But Tweek used the word as if it was synonymous with clever and for some reason, his first instinct was to resist the implications that kind of a word could bring.

“No I’m not, not really.”

Tweek sat down next to him and pulled a face that said ‘sorry dude. I don’t believe you’.

 

…

 

As Craig might have predicted, watching a scary movie with Tweek was like sitting through Schindlers list with Eric Cartman: He was fine for the first half hour, but by the time the first scare came around he was the same off-white colour as the lounge room walls and he wouldn’t sit still. It was as though he had a fundamental objection to everything that was happening on screen. The way he responded was fascinating, the biting nails swiftly becoming nervous plucking at the hair around the nape of his neck. When Craig spotted that he was starting to pull it out and drop it on the carpet strand by strand, he had to say something.

“… Are you okay?”

Tweek nodded, and the hand not pulling his hair was squeezing his forearms so tightly that Craig suddenly knew where all those bruises came from.

“I’ve seen this four times man.”

“Fuck. I would’ve hated to see you the first time.”

“Shut up.”

“You don’t want me to hold your hand or anything?”

It just kind of came out. He hadn’t been serious. But Tweek seemed so startled by the proposal that he felt embarrassment as though he was.

“… What?”

“Kidding. I was kidding.”

He turned his face back to the TV and forced himself to stay focused on the screen for the remainder of the movie.

 

…

 

It was one am and Craig wasn’t sleepy.  Even though he had been exhausted yesterday, his body clock had been thrown off pretty badly by the late night shifts and the coffee he had taken to consuming on a regular basis, and he was starting to see how it was possible for Tweek to tire around four pm and then be wide awake again by half past ten. They had watched two movies, and Craig wasn’t sure he could sit through another without a break, and so a brief visit to the kitchen found them both with large mugs of brew and Tweek a collection of boxes and bottles that doubtlessly contained medication. Craig had only ever had to take accutane, so watching Tweek measure out his pills like it was a ritual of sorts seemed new and fascinating. The colours were bright and the shapes varied, and as he leaned over the breakfast bar (watching how neatly Tweek lined them up in front of him) he had to ask.

“What are all of those?”

Tweek’s eyes flicked upward, and Craig tried not to let their gazes lock for too long. The memory of how badly he had embarrassed himself earlier was still tender in his mind.

“Lots of things,” Came the reply. “Anti-psychotics, sleeping aids, aspirins, and something for blood pressure. The yellow ones for anxiety are new. Oh, and Orpheum.”

“Orpheum?”

Tweek’s eyes fluttered and he scooped all of the meds into one hand.

“That was s a joke.”

Craig didn’t get it. He stared quite unabashedly as Tweek swallowed them all with a mouthful of coffee, and didn’t even realise that that could probably be construed as extremely rude until Tweek set his mug down and coughed self-consciously.

“Oh shit, sorry.”

“It’s okay.” unsurely, Tweek nudged a little bottle of pills along the bench top. “”I forget it’s weird for other people to see... I come in a bottle don’t I? I mean… this is me. They’re nothing but chemicals but I need them to function because without them I have no bearing on reality. That’s kind of funny in a way.”

Funny? Did Tweek think it was a _joke_ that he had to take more pills than Craig’s grandmother who was ninety seven in November?

“… Not really? Everyone is just chemicals really, when you think about it.”

“Funny peculiar. I mean.” He replaced his pills in the clear lunchbox he had retrieved them from and stuck the lunchbox in the bread compartment next to the cookie tins. ‘The doctors are really hesitant to prescribe a lot of stuff to me because of my history, but even before I got this I was still nothing but the drugs I was taking. Caffeine and whatever my parents gave me and whatever weird stuff I could get my hands on in the playground, and it was so obvious in how I acted and how I thought. Now I’m okay but it’s only because of these” he waved an empty blister pack that he had left out in demonstration. The pills that had been in there, Craig remembered, were little and red, and they looked kind of like the birth control tablets his mom took in the mornings. “I’m nothing except for a vessel for the drugs I take.”

Craig thought that was a grim way of looking at it.

“…I thought you were an alien or some other thing.”

“Maybe that’s part of being an alien.” A small arch rose in his right eyebrow, and Craig was struck again by how beautiful he was. “But uh, you know I don’t actually believe that right?”

Oh thank god. Craig felt a wash of relief move over him, and he hadn’t even realised until it was gone how great a weight the fear that _this is what Tweek Tweak actually believes_ had been on his shoulders until it was gone.

“Oh Jesus, Good. It’s hard to tell with you.”

“Is it?” Tweek frowned and hooked a strand of hair behind his ear. “Did you want a second coffee by the way?”

“No thanks.” He pointed to his half finished cup. “You have one though.”

He watched as Tweek set about making a coffee, and  he noticed that the pyjama pants he had changed into during the break between the two films were a little too loose in the elastic. They kept sliding down the small of his back. It was hard not to notice how white the slip of skin there was, and so Craig kept his eyes fixed on the photos on the walls – they were standard department store prints on canvases, and they looked okay. Made the kitchen look a bit like a spread in a magazine as well.

“What?” Tweek asked, turning to glance over his shoulder when Craig’s eyes gravitated back toward him and the shape of his shoulders in his black t-shirt. “Whenever you do it I can feel you staring at me, remember?”

“Oh. Right. Sorry I just uh…” Craig had to think of something fast, and he turned his eyes to the ceiling in the hopes that this would stop this alleged ‘feeling’ (How did he feel that anyway?) from disrupting Tweek’s brewing. Jesus how had he forgotten that weird thing he did where he automatically sensed if someone was staring? Did that mean that every time Craig had ever looked at him he had known? Fuck. The possibility was almost overwhelming terrifying and he tired not to acknowledge it right now.  “Your pyjamas are slipping and I noticed you weren’t wearing boxers?”

Oh fucking hell.

Was that the best he could _possibly_ do? Or was that just him sticking his foot in his throat and making himself vomit all over the kitchen countertop?

But shockingly, Tweek seemed unphased. He continued spooning coffee grinds into the machine without even bothering to hitch up his pants.

“Every time I buy underpants, they disappear.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Are you sure you don’t want a coffee?”

And Craig wondered how it was even possible to function, being so indifferent and carelessly cryptic about some things, and so very, very paranoid about others. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im such fluffy garbage oh my god. <3 (Also, i really hate writing parties because it means i have to admit that ive never actually been to a party. in my whole life. so i have no idea what actually happens at them besides what ive seen in movies. hence, the lack of party in this chapter.)


	12. A Troma DVD boxset holding open a broken bedroom window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> REALTALK so I just discovered there is a list of authors on the SP fanon wikia and I have literally never heard of a fandom doing this before? Am I expected to add myself to this database or is that a bit of a dick move? Please advise. >.>

“Hey. Wakey uppy.”

It felt like he had only just shut his eyes, but when Tweek woke him up the clock on the side table said 10.14 am and the sunlight was pouring through the window clear and bright.

Craig groaned and pulled the pillow over his head. The linen on Tweek’s bed was crisp and perfectly clean. It smelled like his soap and it made Craig think about how when he got home, he would be sure to change his sheets. It had been a couple of weeks since he had done so already, and Tweek’s sheets were making him feel like a total slob. Tweek, who had insisted on sleeping on the sofa in the lounge room, seemed as perky as Craig had ever seen him, but not in the way a healthy person was perky. It seemed a little more manic than that, but it was familiar, and Craig hardly even noticed. He was wearing a tank top and a pair of blue jeans, and even though he obviously hadn’t slept he was holding a large mug of coffee so really, it was all the same thing.

“You want a drink?” He asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and making Craig roll over to accommodate him.

“It’s too early.”

“It’s ten am?”

 Craig narrowed his eyes and sat upright. He could feel his hair sticking up, and there was a knot in his neck because he had been sleeping on his stomach for the majority of the night. “Fuck,” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his collarbone and tried to stretch out the muscles that were troubling him. “You look so tired.”

Tweek shrugged casually and pressed the lip of his coffee mug against his chin.

“I’m okay. I have a horrible migraine? I don’t think those new pills the doctor put me on are working too good.”

“Are you sure it’s not all the coffee you’re drinking?”

“Maybe.” His eyes flickered downward and Craig felt his gaze touch his shoulders. His stomach. His bare chest. “You need a shirt?”

“No. I’m fine. Mines on the floor by my bag.”

Tweek handed it to him, and he pulled it on, hiding the freckles which existed almost without explanation or justification on the planes of his upper torso.

“Freckles.” Tweek mused. Craig rolled his eyes and flattened his hair down impatiently.

“I know, I know. They match the ones on my face.”

“You don’t have freckles on your face?”

“They’re under the acne.”

“… Oh.”

Tweek looked away, and Craig sighed.

The room looked even neater in the sunlight, and Tweek had at some point opened the bedroom window. The multicoloured flags overhead fluttered in the soft breeze, and Craig noticed they had something printed on them. Tiny lines of text in an alphabet Craig didn’t recognise. Outside, he could hear birds singing, and downstairs he could hear the sounds of Tweek’s family occupying the house. He wondered briefly who was minding the coffee shop, but he didn’t ask. They probably had some kind of a system in place.

“Do I get breakfast?” he asked. “Usually I just have a coke.”

“You can have cereal?”

Craig decided that it wasn’t ideal, but it would do.

…

He met the others at midday, at the children’s playground they had taken over gradually at first and then in its entirety, and Token and Clyde had female company so Craig regretted showing up almost the second he rounded the corner. Token’s companion was unfamiliar, probably a girl from a nearby school he had picked up during the course of his summer activities, but Craig knew from behind even that the girl sitting next to Clyde on the swing set was Bebe, her legs curvaceous and stretching the seems of cut-off shorts. Her hair was tied up in a bun, so Craig could see the pale back of her neck.

“Is this us?” he asked, startling Clyde and making him jolt in his swing seat. When Bebe turned to look at him she beamed, and her lips were a rosy red today, her breasts described concisely by a plain black singlet. There was no way in hell she was wearing a bra. Token nodded.

“Kenny and Jimmy are coming too I think. By the way, Craig this is Lisa.”

“Oh. Hey Lisa.”

The girl next to Token, sitting on top of the jungle gym and looking like a goddess in an ankle length dress, smiled and waved a friendly hand in salutation.

“You must be the one Token was talking about.”

“Which one?”

“The guy who bailed on his party last night because he’s a lazy piece of-“

“Lisa! Woah. Cool it off, it’s cool.” Token smiled down at Craig and it was obvious that he was kind of mad, but not mad enough to say anything in front of a girl he was trying to woo. “You missed a great party dude.”

“I’m sure I did.” Craig sat down on the end of the bright yellow plastic slide and picked a piece of woodchip bark up off the ground. The wood was slightly damp and bendable, but the ends were sharp and Craig was never able to figure out why someone would put this kind of bark where children would be playing barefoot- the stuff was notorious for splinters and cuts between toes. “I was pretty sick, sorry.”

“How sick?” Clyde asked, and he must have been hot because he was wearing that stupid varsity jacket he liked, but he didn’t want to take it off in front of Bebe because Craig knew that he thought he looked pants-shittingly cool in the god forsaken thing.

“I had massive diarrhoea, actually. It was fantastic.”

This made Token laugh, and he knew he was off the hook.

“So what happened?” he enquired, wondering to himself what Tweek would be up to right now. When he had left his house he had said he might do something with his mother, and Craig had promised him that he would show up for work tonight on time and ready to clean the shop from top to bottom, but Craig wasn’t so sure if Tweek actually was going to do something or if he was just going to sit in his neat little bedroom rearranging his books by colour order. Maybe he was going to spend the afternoon drinking coffee and watching movies. Maybe he would go back to bed and try to sleep again, only to find that rest continued to evade him. Anything was possible, and Craig kind of wished that he was back at that house wasting the hours away with someone he actually liked instead of sitting here pretending to care who had hooked up with who the night before.

“Eric Cartman got in a fight with some kid from north park in my driveway, Bebe vomited in my Moms yucca plant and Kyle Broflovski got so drunk he called Stan a c-u-n-t and I think they’re still arguing about it now.”

“… Jesus Christ.” Craig had to admit, that would have been a spectacle worth seeing. Bebe protested loudly, about whether or not she _did_ vomit in the plant or if it was actually Butters (who didn’t drink anyway), and Clyde looked at her kind of like a person looks at a puppy they are particularly taken with. It was sick.

“Is that it?”

“Yeah. Well, I met Lisa, and Kenny had sex with Stan’s sister who came around at like two am to pick Stan and Kyle up. Stan was pretty fucked up too.”

“He’s an alcoholic.” Bebe reported simply. Craig rolled his eyes. As if _that_ was news.

“So all in all, it was terrible?”

“God yes.”

“Good. Great to know.” He dropped his bark on the ground and dug his cellphone out of his pocket. No messages. He thought while he was staring at the screen doing nothing though, now would be a good time to change his lock screen so that no one could get in and read his messages again.

“Oh hey Kenny.”

“Sup.”

Craig looked up when he heard Kenny’s voice, and he tried to look indifferent to see the guy wearing a tank top like the one Tweek had been wearing earlier that morning. He had hickeys on his neck, and they looked gross but Craig had always kind of liked the way that hickeys looked, really. Like discoloured flowers.

“Heard you got some last night?” he asked. Kenny wiggled his eyebrows and leaned against the swing set, next to Clyde.

“Jealous?”

“Fuck no.”

He returned his attention to his phone, and Bebe heaved a sigh.

This was it then. Back to the status quo.

He hated the feeling he couldn’t shake, like the night before had been a dream and a reprieve. He couldn’t remember having felt so interested and comfortable around someone in a long time. He was starting to wonder if he had ever felt that way about his friends at all.

…

“Not working today huh?”

Kenny slipped to the back of the group next to Craig as they made their way down the street, and his head was about level with Craig’s shoulder but somehow his presence was intimidating and Craig had to resist the urge to lean away. He smelt like cigarettes and bodyspray.

“Tonight.” He replied, and he tried to look like he was texting but really he was just going through all the messages on his cellphone and deleting ones from people he didn’t talk to any more, like Cartman, who he had to do an assignment with last term in physics and found to be ten times as insufferable in large doses as he was in small, manageable bites.

“Right, right…” Kenny thrust his hands into his pockets and cocked his head cutely, and Craig had the distinct sense that he was seeing straight through him like he was made of glass or plastic wrap. “You working with Tweek again then?”

“Yep.”

“Gunna be up all night what… talking to him?”

“Sure. That’s what I usually do.”

Kenny looked thoughtfully perplexed, and Craig felt a sly sense of triumph because Kenny didn’t like to come across as being stumped. He was more the kind of person to feign confidence until he really felt it.

“You know… I’ve said this already, but there’s something really off about Tweek right? Like… he’s weird in the head.”

“Yes. I know that.” Craig remembered that handful of pills, and for some reason hearing Kenny say that hurt like he was saying it about Craig. He wanted to spring to Tweek’s defence, but he wasn’t sure how to do that without looking like a tool.

“No, Craig, you don’t understand.” Kenny stopped walking, and no one noticed except for Craig. They carried on chattering about the party, discussing social interactions and other unimportant things, and Craig had to pause because otherwise Kenny would just be left behind talking to no one. His eyes were as clear and hard as they had ever been, and there wasn’t even the faintest trace of a smile around his mouth. Craig’s stomach clenched unpleasantly. “I’m sure he’s a really nice person? But he’s probably _dangerous_. Trust me. I know about this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing?”

Kenny’s eyes narrowed just an increment, and he wrapped his arms around himself in the closet gesture Craig had ever seen him make to defensiveness.

“Has Tweek ever said anything or done anything around you that seemed… abnormal?”

“All the time.”

“No I mean, unnatural.”

“… No?”

“Hm.” Kenny touched the back of his neck, and Craig glanced at his fingers which were, as always, that strange and fragile looking purple at the tips. Poor circulation maybe? Craig had never found himself wondering about it before. “there’s something off about him dude. Watch your fucking ass.”

Craig was going to retort, say that he was big enough and ugly enough to take care of himself, but he was interrupted by Token calling back at them impatiently.

“Hurry up!” he shouted, and almost everyone in the street turned to look. “We’re heading to Clyde’s place for lunch, yo!”

Craig huffed, and reluctantly found himself jogging to catch up.

…

Clyde’s dad was pretty good at making sandwiches, but unfortunately Craig didn’t much care for white bread or egg and mayo so rather than partake he sat in the lounge room and flicked through the channels on the TV – The Donnovan’s had cable, so there was N times as much crap to skip over than usual, and Craig was actually deriving some pleasure form the process when he was interrupted by a weight falling into the sofa next to him, and Bebe was trying to thrust a sandwich into his face.

“Have a bite?” she invited, and Craig shook his head in polite refusal. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the other filing in with their food on small tea saucers and taking seats. Kenny had at least eight sandwiches, six more than everyone else, and he had eaten three before he had even sat down on Craig’s other side and poked his nose unceremoniously into the conversation.

“Hey B. Lookin’ pretty good today.” He cocked an eyebrow, and Bebe tried to look like she wasn’t blushing when she waved him away.

“You’re such a creep Kenny. I’m talking to Craig.”

“Oh yeah? What’s he got that I don’t?” he elbowed Craig discretely in the side as he said this, and oh boy. Craig could see what he was doing from a mile away and he wanted no part of it.

“Money.” Bebe answered simply, biting into her sandwich and obviously taking Kenny by surprise. Craig almost laughed at his face, which looked like she may have just slapped it, and he also almost laughed at the implication that Craig was better off than Kenny in the finance department as well –Kenny had no shortage of ready cash tucked away on his person, and there was no question as to whether or not it was more than Craig’s entire weekly paycheck. Where he got that money (and what he spent it on, because it definitely wasn’t food or rent or clothing) was a mystery Craig had no desire to unravel.

“Rude as fuck. Craig’s just as poor as I am you know. Also he spends all his money on dumb hats.”

“You can talk. You never take of your stupid – whatever this is.” Craig shoved his parka hood off his face and tried not to let Kenny distract him from being aloof and glum. This made Bebe laugh, and the others too, and Clyde pointed out through a mouthful of sandwich that Kenny was in rather desperate need of a haircut.

“I’m going for a Viking look you guys. Fuck off.”

“You’re too short to be a Viking.”

“Well I don’t see any of you guys offering to give me a haircut.” He pulled his hood back up and set his plate of sandwiches on the coffee table.

The atmosphere in the lounge was more comfortable than it was out on the street. Mostly because Clyde wasn’t complaining about having to walk too much and because there was little to no pressure on Craig to walk slow enough to stay with the group. Clyde’s house was small and it had the feeling of a place which was run by a man in a Martha Stewart apron - which was probably on account of the fact that it _was_. The large family photograph on the wall was at least ten years old and the plastic flowers in the vase by the television were faded and dusty. The carpet looked like it had been recently vacuumed, but by someone who hadn’t in seven years figured out how to change a full vacuum bag. The magazines on the coffee table were auto-repair magazines, and Craig found himself reaching for one and flicking through it even though his childhood interest in mechanics had been brief at best.

He wasn’t really reading the articles anyway, he was too busy being aware of the fact he could smell Kenny’s body spray, and the longer he sat there musing about it the more annoyed he found himself becoming because like, woah. How dare he try and tell Craig who he should and shouldn’t be careful around? Kenny was a reckless and trashy person who was more likely than most to be involved in some dodgy dealings Craig couldn’t even begin to imagine. He was nice, yes. And he meant well, definitely. But Tweek was shy and sweet and Craig actually _really_ liked him. Did Kenny think that just because he was charismatic and attractive he could boss Craig around?

He realised he was turning the pages of the magazine a little bit too roughly when Bebe put her hand on his leg and gave it a soft squeeze.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly, while the others made animated conversation about Butters Stotch and his upcoming exchange. “You seem really busy in your own head today.”

“I’m fine.” Craig told her instantaneously, and for the first time ever he met her eyes without feeling the gap between their genders and the pressure she was putting on him to go steady. “What do you mean?”

“You. You seem so frustrated and upset about something and you’re hardly talking at all.”

Her hand wandered a little higher up his leg and suddenly, Craig saw something in her eyes which made his breath catch and stomach swoop unpleasantly. It wasn’t anything to do with Bebe, because in those moments Bebe was just a mirror in which he saw his mind reflected, and as the clouds in his head parted briefly he felt a fait glimmer of understanding at the edge of his awareness.

Maybe the problem isn’t Kenny undermining Craig’s ability to judge people. Maybe the problem is _Tweek_ , and the way he is making Craig feel so different to how he usually does. The way he makes Craig want to defend him, even if it means punching Kenny in his stupid beautiful face.

Perhaps there _was_ something weird about the guy, after all. Something hypnotic and inescapable.

Unfortunately, Craig lost track of this thought. When he opened his mouth to respond to Bebe, she silenced him with a finger and a small smile around the corners of her lips.

“It’s okay,” She told him. “Let’s see if I can cheer you up again.”

She leaned in close enough that he could smell her chapstick, and she kissed him.

…

“She what?”

Tweek was leaning over the counter, picking inconsistently at a stale muffin from the cabinet and looking a little bit more disgusted than Craig had thought he might when he heard the news.

“Bebe kissed me. On the mouth.”

“But _why_ though?!”

This might have been a rude or offensive question, if it hadn’t been obvious in his intonation that he was asking why she had thought that would be appropriate instead of why she would want to kiss _Craig_. Of all people. Craig shrugged and went back to cleaning the juicer.

“No idea. But yeah everyone stared at me and afterward I’m pretty sure Clyde wanted to rip my balls off. The whole thing kind of took me by surprise.”

He could feel the nape of his neck prickling because he was absolutely, positively 100% certain that at this stage Tweek was looking at him like he didn’t understand how Craig was being so calm. Which he probably didn’t because Tweek didn’t really understand how anyone could be so calm generally – Craig was sure that this was the exact kind of situation that would send this boy spiralling into panic, and he silently thanked god that this situation wasn’t reversed and he wasn’t tasked with talking him down in the aftermath.

When Craig turned from juicer to fling pulp and skins into the rubbish, he noted that Tweek  looked tense and very uncomfortable – his muffin looked like it had been pecked at periodically by reasonably restrained canaries, and as such he had _not_ gotten his four dollars worth from it. God, the food at this place was over priced.

“… How do you feel about that?” his workmate asked carefully. Again Craig shrugged.

“No strong feelings.”

It was partly a lie because he didn’t want to explain to Tweek that the whole event had been a huge disappointment. His first post-pubescent kiss, and all that he had taken from it was that Bebe’s lips were kind of cold and sticky because she wore lipbalm. He hadn’t even sprung a surprise boner about it, and Kenny had always told him that this was a sure-fire way to tell if a kiss was hot or not. His pants had been dead-fish-ville and frankly even when Bebe pulled back and her cheeks were pink and her face was glowing with what could objectively be called radiance, Craig hadn’t even felt a little wiggle of desire in his chest. Did that make him a failure then? Did that make him a pervert because the only time he could feel _any_ kind of lust or appreciation for this perfectly pleasant perfectly pretty and perfectly perfect creature was when he was imagining her naked and stroking her tits.

No. Even that felt weird to think about.

Craig sighed and Tweek tugged on a frazzled lock of hair at the nape of his neck.

“You look miserable.”

“I’m not miserable. I’m just… I dunno. Let down maybe?”

“Dis-enchanted. Good word. But uh, and I hope I’m not out of line by saying this, if you really aren’t that into her maybe you should say?”

“Oh yeah? And what do you know about dealing with girls?”

Now it was Tweek’s turn to sigh. He gestured for Craig to stop clearing sticky orange remnants out of the juicing blades. He had already scolded him for doing so without gloves once today.

“Oh boy.” He said. “Girls are weird. They do weird things and then they look at you like they expect you to know what it means. Dealing with them is too much pressure, and I _hate_ it because I always used to get girls try and… you know?” His nose scrunched and Craig raised his eyebrows, interested to hear where this might be going.

“Do I?”

“Try to talk to me.” he turned a strange shade of pink, but only very barely, and Craig noticed that he really wasn’t looking too flash that evening. He had the clammy paleness of someone who looked like they might be headachey and queasy, and his pupils were dilated to the point where Craig could hardly even see the green-hazel of his irises. The effect made his eyes look larger than usual, and more blank, and if Craig only had the opportunity to glimpse him in passing then any suspicion that he was possessed or sick as hell may not have been misplaced.  “This is really embarrassing. _God_.”

“Don’t be embarrassed. I’m interested.”

Craig rounded the counter, and pulled himself up so he was able to sit in the space where customers usually ordered. His legs dangled down the side, and Tweek had to move his muffin to make him room to sit there so comfortably.

“Well I am. Lots of girls used to approach me when I was in Denver because I dunno. I guess I’m not that ugly or something? But I never knew how to talk back to them. And usually I over-reacted so after a while they stopped trying. But there was this _one_ girl and she was a lot older than me? We uh… oh man.” he coughed and Craig could see him worrying the inside of his cheek. It was fascinating, watching his face up this close. Craig could see his eyelashes and the little creases around the corners of his lips. Both of which were surprisingly beautiful.

“You fucked?” Craig asked, remembering with a bizarrely triumphant pang in his belly Tweek’s mysterious ‘friend’ at the institution, who had given him books and about whom he had seemed so reluctant to speak. It was obvious from the look of stricken humiliation on Tweek’s face that he was correct.

“Don’t tell _anyone_!” he implored, and to express double urgency he grabbed Craig’s wrist in a startlingly strong grip. “Oh Jesus, I’m serious. If anyone knew I would drop dead. I hated it so much!”

Craig was so surprised to actually hear him admit it, he didn’t actually know what to say.

“…What was she like?” he tried.

“I don’t know. We were just friends in the hospital but then she kept giving me things and I don’t know it just _happened._ and it was only one time because afterwards I panicked and refused to see her again.”

He looked quite troubled, and Craig actually felt a twinge of sorrow and empathy for him. Poor guy. Imagine being so freaked out by _sex._ It seemed horrible.  

“… Did you tell anyone?” Craig asked. Tweek shook his head and pushed the remainder of his muffin in Craig’s direction.

“No… I was worried people would think I was being stupid. Which I was right? Jesus, it wasn’t even a big deal but I just… it felt like the wrong thing to have done and so I ran away from it instead of apologising.”

Craig took the muffin and started picking bits off it thoughtfully. Upon tasting, he found it to be pleasant enough but very crumbly, because Tweek’s poking had compromised its structural integrity quite severely. It was odd, that he wasn’t all that _shocked_ to hear that this guy wasn’t a virgin. Perhaps some part of him had just reached the point where he had accepted that Tweek was good looking and probably a very viable prospect for mentally fragile girls. Maybe he was a little bit sceptical. Tweek _did_ know what fucking was, right? He decided to just go along with it, and responded accordingly.

“I don’t think panicking about it was stupid per se. I mean, if you made a mistake you’re allowed to worry a _little_. But you should probably have… you know. Fixed the problem?”

“ _Fixed_ the problem?”

Tweek seemed so confused by this that Craig decided he had better not tell him about wonders of saying ‘sorry, not interested. Thanks for the sex though’ today. Besides, doing so would definitely be an exquisite display of hypocrisy. Really, he mused as he finished off the muffin and swiped his finger around the rim of the plate to collect stray crumbs, he and Tweek were in the same boat about girls. Neither of them wanted to face up to declining invitations and hurting feelings, and wow. He hadn’t realised how much he had needed to hear something like that until right now. Suddenly, he didn’t feel quite so much like an asshole with a huge fear of romantic responsibility. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so alone.

“Yeah… never mind.” He fell silent, the thanks for Tweek’s little confession balanced on the tip of his tongue. Should he say it? Should he keep his stupid mouth shut? What would Tweek’s response be? He really, really hoped it would be to offer him a coffee…

“I uh… thanks for telling me that. I guess.”

It came out so lamely that he felt a little part of himself shrivel up and blacken in embarrassment. He really, really hoped his friend hadn’t noticed.

“… You’re welcome?”

Craig shook his head and pushed his bangs off his forehead in exasperation.

“No, that’s not what I mean. I mean… thanks for listening to my stupid girl problems without telling me that I’m being an idiot and I should… you know. Sleep with her. I appreciate it. I’m pretty bad at facing issues like this and being told I’m making the wrong choices doesn’t help.”

Tweek’s mouth curved upward and he pulled his shoulders into a sheepish shrug.

“Man, if there’s one thing I know a lot about, it’s hiding from the things which stress me out. You’re not the only person in the world who doesn’t want to take responsibility for what other people think you should do.” He erected himself fully and gestured behind him at the coffee machine.

“Want a drink? I need something to wash down that muffin. It’s made me feel so sick.”

Craig felt his stomach clench and his pulse increase just enough remind him that Tweek is someone he actually really likes, and they still have another six hours alone together before he has to say goodbye the next morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im running out of pre-written chapters for this its making me nervous tbh.


	13. A folder of photographs of that one famous person you like saved to a USB shaped like a heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again to all those lovely persons who took the time to leave kudos and a comment! ive had a pleasantly surprising amount of positive feedback on this story both on here and on my tumblr so i really appreciate your taking the effort to let me know your thoughts <3

Unfortunately, Tweek wasn’t in the best talking state the next night. Or the night after that. In fact, if Craig had to be honest, he probably would have described the boy’s condition as ‘very very bad’. And that wasn’t just because he looked like he hadn’t ever slept in his life. Craig could hear him in the bathroom vomiting not three hours after the two of them started their shift and he was amazed, because the only logical explanation Craig could come up with was that that muffin from yesterday had _really_ fucked him up.

The sounds of retching from the other room made Craig feel kind of second hand queasy, but he pretended he didn’t hear them mostly because he knew from experience that there was nothing worse than heaving your guts into the toilet and having someone stand outside laughing about it. He had been drunk at Token’s far too many times to let his experiences puking go without changing him.

He occupied himself by loading the dishwasher with mugs and saucers instead, humming under his breath along with the music playing on the speakers. It was just gone midnight and the sky outside was overcast, so no moonlight or stars lit the streets, and the lights in the store were playing up for some reason. Craig forced himself not to notice they were flickering, and made a note to tell Tweek so that when he was finished he could go check the fuse box, wherever it happened to be.

Tweek had gotten slowly worse over the evening, and dryly Craig hoped that by the time he had to leave Tweek wouldn’t be passed out or dead. The guy refused to call his dad and let him know he was sick, and though it hadn’t been much at first, just a few shakes and a couple of dropped glasses, Craig knew he was starting to run a fever which may or may not have been related to the anxiety he was feeling at falling so suddenly and violently ill. In that one brief moment Craig’s hand had brushed Tweek’s when they were cleaning the coffee machines he was sure that Tweek’s skin could have been on fire. Or maybe that was just his own response to the feeling of touching him.

His hoping that Tweek would be all right however was not entirely unselfish: Craig was slowly becoming aware of a nervous feeling in his guts that in the next day or two he might be asked to take the night shift alone.

He still hadn’t really come to terms with the fact that it was dark outside during the night time (An elementary fact which had never really affected him to the extent it did now), and frankly the prospect of being by himself in a quiet shop terrified him because what if some maniac tried to hold up the store at four am? What if all the antagonists from ever spooky film he had ever seen were real for just one night and that night happened to be the one where he was alone in the store wired on caffeine and waiting for the night time to pass? Knowing his luck, it would be.

Hell, with the lights shuttering on and off like this, it may even have been _tonight_ – Craig did have an awful uneasy mood about the atmosphere. If Tweek still hadn’t come back in two minutes, he might have to go in and check on him.

Fortunately, it was just as Craig thought this that he reappeared. And suffice to say he really did look like utter shit. His skin was greyish and he was wearing a black beanie that made Craig very uncomfortable, not just because Craig wasn’t allowed to wear a hat on shift but also because seeing Tweek with a hat on was a surreal experience. He would have looked cute if he didn’t also look like death warmed over, and he would have passed as just ill if his eyes didn’t glitter with a crazed kind of light. Craig observed that his hands were shaking when he pulled his apron back over his head and that he fumbled with the ties so badly that in the end, he couldn’t even tie them up.

“… Are you all right?” Craig had to ask, “You’re shaking pretty badly.”

“Yeah.” Tweek nodded and drifted to his place behind the counter. “I’m just… dying I guess.”

“… Okay? So What’s with the hat?”

“Uhm… nothing. Ignore it.” He pulled the front of the beanie down self consciously and Craig felt his lips turn down in concern.

“Dude. If you’re sick, go home.”

“No, it’s fine. Its my pills in convinced of it.“

The lights shuttered and Tweek’s body stiffened, like he was a dear in the headlights preparing to be struck. Craig felt his skin crawl in a way he hadn’t known it to do before.

“Oh god…” Tweek’s voice sounded like he was squeezing it out, like water being twisted from a damp sheet. “Oh god what’s doing that?”

“I figured it was the fuse box maybe?”

“No. No it couldn’t be that.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head fiercely and his nails made a horrible noise as they dragged across the countertop.

“Couldn’t be. No way. _Jesus Christ_ …”

Craig didn’t know what to do or what to say. He stayed back and tried to avoid talking to him for the rest of the night. At six am, when he made to leave, Tweek was lying in the same position he had been that first day he had come in for the job – slumped across the till with his eyes closed, and muttering strange nonsense under his breath.

…

The first rain came at the end of the week – Craig thought he was imagining it at first but when he pulled himself away from cleaning the guinea pig cage to check out his window he saw it was real, and that even though there was a faint yellowy light to the air which made the rainfall seem like it was happening in full sunshine the horizon over the mountains was proper backed up with dark clouds and threatening blusters. He knew as soon as he saw the clouds approaching that it was going to _pour_ down, and the notion filled him with a sense of excitement kind of like an electrical charge in his belly _._

He finished up cleaning out his cage and feeding his pets, before heading downstairs to wash and sanitise his hands. The alcohol based hand sanitizer thing was a habit he had picked up from Tweek, who was (unsurprisingly) almost always worried about germs or infections) and who usually carried a bottle of purell on his person. Craig probably took to using it because he liked the smell – kind of like the way he liked the smell of the teabag he dropped into a mug on the kitchen counter and the fragile perfume of the steam from the kettle spout when his water boiled. He poured himself a cup of tea and thought that he always _was_ attracted to the wintery pleasures in life. The frost on his window at seven am on a January morning. The feeling of a hot shower after walking home in the rain. Feeling a distinct sense of relief and contentment wit the latest turn of atmospheric events, he brought his cup of tea out to the front porch and sat down on the steps, under the little awning that kept the doorway and the grubby boots and shoes left in front of it dry. The chilled air made the hairs on his arms prickle, but he liked the tingle and the thrill. As he nursed his tea he let his eyes wander up the craggy terrain of looming clouds. The white-wine-coloured light that had tinted the evening previously was dissolving, and a steely grey mood was settling over the whole town. As any suburban street in a small mountain settlement tended to be, the street outside Craig’s house was very quiet, and in the windows of the house opposite Craig could see a small posse of ten year olds sitting around a television watching an animated movie.

He had a gulp of his tea, noted that he had developed a taste for the beverage a lot faster than he had for coffee and perhaps, at this point, he even enjoyed the taste more than diet coke, and immediately attributed this to the fact that it was a comfort thing he very much associated with being around Tweek.

It was bizarre, that he should have ay specific comfort things associated with Tweek, but here he was.

He sighed and placed his cup down next to his feet, and leaned with his back against the front door so that if anyone opened up to come outside he would fall backwards and make an utter nuisance of himself. He trained his eyes on the greyish concrete footpath leading from the sidewalk up to his house, and the speckled darker pattern the rainfall etched on its surface with each passing second. After about ten minutes, small puddles began to form and with them, little concentric ripples each time a little droplet hit the ground. Craig watched them form and spread, he watched them echo and he watched the tiny, misty water beads that splashed back spring around on the rough footpath looking for a place to land. He let the sound of it get under his skin and carry him away, and soon his tea was getting cold, his mind snatched up and drifting through half-formed ideas and thoughts concerning his friends and his responsibilities and the underlying meaning of it all. Why was he here? Why was it that, of all the lives on this earth and all the time periods he might have been born into, he was born himself and he was born here and why was he here right _now_? What on earth exactly could that mean?

He didn’t even notice his tea getting cold.

It was when he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket that he was snapped out of it, having not even realised he had slipped into a half-hypnotised state of self reflection. Almost instantly, he forgot the tranquil emptiness of mind and stillness of thought which had come with watching little circles radiate from the impact points of rain, fumbling to pull it out just in case it was Bebe and he had to tell her to go away. He hadn’t spoken to her since the kiss, and frankly he really didn’t want to. He had already ignored four of her texts and self-invitations to his house, plus a phone call and an outsourced text from jimmy ( _Hey Craig, would you like to bring Bebe to my place this Friday for charades night with the guys and Tokens new girlfriend_?), and he knew deep down that sometime he would have to talk to her about it but even though he now had Tweek to turn to for support, it was easier to decide he wanted to tell her ‘no’ than it was to actually go through with it. Although though he knew he coukdnt keep ignoring it much longer, he would really rather not have the conversation of termination of this arrangement because he knew she would get upset and he knew he would have to be grilled about it by his friends. Each message she had so far sent had been received with sweaty palms and a thumping heart, and even as he pulled his phone out he could feel his blood turning cold in preparation to bust out sweat like it was his job. He needn’t have worried.

The message was from Kenny, and when he opened it he could tell it was obviously a wrong number.

_Wiish u were here so I could lick out your navel and slide my hands down the front of your jeans.._

Craig cringed, and tried to think of the name of the girl was close enough to his name in Kenny’s directory for him to have made such a mistake. As far as Craig knew the number next to his in Kenny’s phonebook was Butters. Alphabetical order, and all that jazz. He felt a painful little pang in his belly when he text back to let him know he had made a mistake, but rest assured he would be gushing in his pants if he had a place to gush from so desperately.

He was mostly joking.

Mostly.

He turned off his screen and set his phone down next to his cold tea. Man, if Tweek had been here, he would have been able to warn Craig in advice that Kenny was going to text him. Or at least warned him to expect a message that would throw off his concentration on the rain and short circuit all the logical or contemplative parts of his brain. He fondly recalled the time Tweek had predicted a text coming through, and he wondered if that was one of those weird Tweekish quirks that made him so mesmerising. Craig liked it a whole lot, even though the incident had freaked him out a little at the time. Maybe he should ask him if he could do it again.

Nah, the more the thought about it, the more obvious it seemed that it was just a coincidence.

Besides, Tweek was probably still sick today, and as much as Craig would have liked to go for a cosy walk in the rain to see him he didn’t think that kind of silliness would be conducive to Tweek’s improved health. Maybe he should text him instead and ask? But no. if he was asleep, that might wake him up, and after the rough last night he had had Craig _really_ didn’t want to bother him too much.

He would see him later on that night at work, and his fear that Tweek still might be sick would be vindicated.

Around ten twenty pm he would check his phone and see that Kenny had text him back.

The only thing he said would be

_Shit, Sorry._

…

Bebe showed up on his doorstep at eleven am, and Craig was still asleep when his mother rapped gently on his bedroom door and poked her head ever so nervously inside.

“Craig? Are you awake? There’s someone here to see you…”

He sat up immediately even though he was half awake and only wearing underwear, because some embarrassing part of him hoped that whoever it was visiting at this hour would be Tweek. His friend had been quite ill and extremely untalkative the night before, and Craig had felt weirdly like he had missed out on something (Conversation) when he had left the shop earlier that morning.

He was mistaken.

Bebe edged into the room when his mother slipped out, and gave him a smile that said she was glad to see him. Although he didn’t register this until ten seconds later when he realised that not only was she _not_ Tweek, he was also naked from the waist up and his sheets were barely covering his morning wood. His breath caught and he scrambled to cover himself, hoping against hope that she didn’t notice or that she was some kind of a hallucination brought on by exhaustion. When her eyes flickered down to his crotch and brightened significantly, he felt his heart sink to the pit of his stomach and he groaned.

“Oh my god Bebe. What do you want?”

It was too early in the morning for politeness, but unfortunately she didn’t seem to mind.

She perched on the foot of his bed and gazed around his room casually, taking in the faded red racer poster and the big bag of guinea pig pellets under his desk. He felt an awful lot more naked as she did this than he did when she was looking at his bare chest, and feeling himself flush he tried to cough loud enough to catch her attention, but subtly enough that it wasn’t obvious at all.

“What do you want?” he repeated.

She looked at him uncomprehending for a moment, before breaking into a huge grin.

“I wanted to come see you, silly. You haven’t talked to me for a few days so I figured I would come by”

Her expression clearly indicated that she thought this was the best idea anyone, anywhere, had ever had the good fortune to have.

“Oh my god…”

 “What?” she asked coyly, curling a lock of hair around her finger. She was so close that Craig could see the pupils of her eyes dilate when she looked at his lips.

He didn’t really know how to reply. He wasn’t really awake and he wasn’t really thinking at full capacity, but he knew that Bebe was there and he knew that she was there for a reason, right in front of him. He wondered briefly if this was a wet dream, and if it was he was surprising himself because he sure as hell hadn’t seen that coming. Was she going to start stripping in the next six seconds, or what? When she bit her lip and dropped her eyes prettily, he felt the hairs on his arms prickle in a traitorous wave. He curled his toes into the mattress and hardened his resolve.

“What what?” he asked eventually, rubbing his hand over his face in exasperation. “You know, I’m really tired and I was actually kind of asleep. Couldn’t you have text or something first?”

She rolled her eyes and reminded him that she had, in fact, text him. Several times.

“I thought we could hang out today some.” She continued, and Craig sniffed uncomftably when she shuffled a little closer to him on the bed. He tried to pull his knees back to his chest to avoid her getting too close to his feet. “But if you’re tired, we don’t actually have to go out to spend some time together. I would be happy to stay here with you a while. If, you know.” She hooked a curl of hair behind her ear and Craig remembered that Bebe was actually really pretty. Why was it that he wasn’t attracted to her again?

“’I know’ what?”

“You want to?”

Craig tried to back away further than he already was when she inched even near, but the wall against his back foiled his escape and soon she was so close that he could almost have reached out and placed his hand directly onto her breast - an unwelcome and sudden realisation which placed itself at the forefront of his mind. Irritatingly enough, it was stubbornly refusing to be dismissed.

He _could_ do it. right now. With utter ease. She probably wouldn’t even stop him, and that understanding triggered the most unreal experience he had ever had in his whole, tedious life.

He was Craig Tucker, and there was a girl right there in his room. They could probably be having sex within the next ten minutes if he wanted to, and now he was actually acknowledging that this was _real_ he realised that he wasn’t ready for this. He had always figured that things like dating and hormones were problems for future-Craig, but now future-Craig and present-Craig had become one and the same and maybe he was jumping to conclusions. Maybe her slow encroachment was as platonic and innocent as those times he used to brush Ruby’s hair for her when she was seven.

He hoped so. He really, _really_ hoped so. The thought of actually having sex with Bebe, or anyone outside of the fantasy word in which he conducted his mastabatory daydreams, was something unimaginable and terrifying to him. How the fuck had Tweek done it? Craig wished it had occurred to him to ask. Did he realise at the time what was actually happening? Did he feel like a different person afterwards? Craig wanted nothing more than to know the answers because maybe then he would have some idea of where he stood. Whether or not this feeling was normal, and the sweaty palm and deep dread sensation he was having (Like when he was caught cheating on his math test that one time in fifth grade) was something everyone felt when they were contemplating rubbing their genitals against someone else’s.

He must have been blushing pretty hard. Bebe obviously picked up on it and mis-interpreted his body language, because with a little sigh she rubbed her hand over her collarbone and ‘accidentally’ popped one of the buttons on her thin white blouse.

“Don’t just stare like that.” She murmured, and her voice sounded like she was trying to be alluring, but Craig’s passions were so cold that he almost wanted to vomit to hear it. “Touch me.”

When she reached for his hand he inhaled sharply and yanked it away.

This was a bad move.

Bebe seemed startled, as though he had just slapped her, and shocked like he had done something she hadn’t been prepared for. Which he had, because it was obvious that when she came along she had intended to get in his pants and she thought she was going to be walking away with his V plate tucked into the back pocket of her cute tight jeans. When she turned cornflower blue eyes up too look at him he could have sworn he saw her bottom lip quiver, and this made a guilty lump choke his apology at the back of his throat. He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t do anything. He was paralysed with shock and even if he wasn’t there was nowhere to hide in his own bedroom. She held up her hand in front of her face and stared at it as if she had never noticed it was there before.

“I’m sorry?” she asked, and Craig felt his skin tighten on the frame of his body like he was trying to shrink, but his bones wouldn’t let him. “Have I upset you?”

God, he _wished_ she had caught on a little sooner. He shook his head and wetted his lips, trying desperately to find something to say. This was it. the moment he had to say no. the moment he had to say ‘ok Bebe, you’re great, but I’m really not interested.’

He ended up saying

“Don’t touch me. Stop embarrassing yourself.”

And he didn’t _mean_ it to sound cold or cruel or unpleasant but Craig was not the most sympathetic or considerate sounding person, and a lot of what he said tended to sound about ten times more passive aggressive than he intended it to most of the time so of course hearing it come out like it did made him wish he had just lay down and let her ride his dick until it feel right off. Surely, the aftermath of that would be easier to handle than the aftermath of whatever it was Bebe was going to say now she had heard that, and her jaw had dropped like a lead block to the floor.

“ _What_?!”

“I mean, no. I mean, this is so embarrassing. I don’t like you! I mean, you’re nice but I really, _really_ don’t like you so –“

“You _hate_ me?!”

“No! You’re beautiful and I like you so much.”

“You just said you didn’t though! I heard you!”

She stood up, her removed weight making the bed creak as it returned to its usual state, and Craig could see the fires flashing dangerously behind her features. “What is your fucking problem? Are you gay or something?!”

Craig recoiled, as if wounded by the accusation, and Bebe’s eyes became so wide and so furious that they looked at risk of falling out of her head.

 “You _are_!” she hissed, as if that was some great wrong doing on his part. “You’re fucking _gay_ and you let me humiliate myself like this?!”

“Bebe im not gay!”

“Oh _bullshit_!”

Craig wasn’t sure if she didn’t believe him because she was so angry and hurt, or if he was just unconvincing because there was, at the back of his mind, some annoying little voice that wouldn’t stop screaming ‘ _liar!’_ over and over again. Craig wasn’t gay. He _wasn’t_. Even though the idea made his mouth dry and his heart pound, he would deny it until he was laid in his grave. He just wasn’t interested in Bebe and she _had_ to be convinced of that. She had to. 

“Bullshit nothing! I just don’t like you!”

“Oh come _on_ Craig! What’s not to like? I’m smart, I’m beautiful, and you were such a decent guy no wonder I thought you were so _fucking_ ideal. The perfect match. Except now I’ve made a total idiot of myself and you were probably going home about it in the evening and laughing your ass off about it with all your friends. I can’t _believe_ they never told me you were gay!”

“That’s because I’m _not_!”

Bebe huffed as though she didn’t believe a spit and hurriedly reaffixed her top button. The last thing she said as she sniffed and yanked open his door made him want to curl up in a little ball and die, because Jesus Christ, she made it sound so _simple_ and she just didn’t understand.

“If you just told me straight up, we could have just been friends Craig.”

She slammed the door in her wake.

Feeling a lot like he had just ruined everything, and filled with an endless and painfully deep ache that seemed irreparable, Craig had his first taste of real, human misery and he loathed it in a way that only amplified the pain of fucking up. It was too early in the morning for this. He was tired, and all he wanted to do was sleep.

He didn’t even bother to pull up his sheets, he just lay there with his face pressed to his pillow and he cried.  

…

He called Tweek.

It wasn’t even a thing he had to think about, it seemed like the easiest most natural thing to do so he did it, and within half an hour he was at the Tweak house sitting in the upstairs lounge, and even though Tweek was still as sick as a dog he made him a cup of tea that was supposed to taste like strawberries and cream but really just tasted kind of like the sugar he put in it. The cleanness of the space made him feel calmer, although it didn’t make him feel any less empty inside, and the large feather duvet Tweek had wrapped him in made him feel safe and warm. He almost kind of felt _not_ like he wanted to die when he curled up in the corner of the sofa and watched his host clear away the empty coffee mugs standing around innocuously on the coffee table.

If only he could say as much for his friend.

Tweek was still wearing his beanie, and a huge grey sweater over his jeans. When he sat down cross legged on the opposite side of the sofa he looked a little bit like he was going to loose his balance and land face first on the carpet. Craig sipped his tea and studied him, and wondered if he had made an appointment to see a doctor yet. He seemed feverish and flushed, and Craig almost felt bad for disturbing his recuperation with an issue like this.

Or at least he would have, if Tweek didn’t seem so glad to have him there.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Craig checked. His voice was kind of froggy from having a sob that morning, but he didn’t think it was all that easy to notice. Tweek nodded reassuringly, picking at hanging tabs of skin around the beds of his nails.

“Fine. I’ve started taking double dosage of my pills so hopefully that will help.”

Craig nibbled his bottom lip sceptically, but refrained from voicing his doubts about that aloud.

“You don’t mind me being here?”

Tweek shook his head this time and reached for a device stashed on the little rack underneath the coffee table Craig hadn’t noticed before. It was plastic and curly and it reminded Craig of some kind of Rubik’s toy. When he sat back he started fiddling with it, his eyes fixing on Craig’s face.

“I’m glad you came to see me actually. I feel kind of like I’m going to think too much about being sick and panic if I’m alone too long, you know?”

Craig nodded hollowly, and blew carefully over the surface of his tea even though it was perfectly adequate a drinking temperature.

“Well, honestly I just wanted to talk to someone about the whole ‘Thing’ with Bebe. But I didn’t know who else would want to listen without telling me I’m being an idiot.”

Tweek’s eyes fluttered and Craig felt his stomach twist when he recognised a tiny twitch in the other boys jaw. It reminded him a lot of thee weird jerking thing Tweek used to do in elementary school, and he felt a little poke of embarrassment at having noticed.

“That’s okay. I don’t think you’re an idiot. It’s just…” he shifted around in his seat uncomfortably and sighed. Craig noticed that there were no clocks in this room. No way to tell the time except by the numbers on the screen of his phone. It was mid-afternoon, and he still hadn’t had any breakfast.

“Just what?”

“I dunno. Maybe you were a bit harsh on her?”

Craig groaned and let his head fall back against the arm of the sofa.

“I _know_. I should have told her I didn’t like her from the start. Now I feel like I’ve wrecked her life and my life and everyone is going to hate me forever.”

“This is going to sound rich coming from me, but you are being really overdramatic right now.”

“I am not!”

Craig flushed, and tried to remind himself that Tweek didn’t understand. He couldn’t understand. Because despite how badly Craig had ached to throw himself on the other boy and hold him in a bone cracking hug when he opened the door, Craig had refrained from doing so and similarly he had neglected to mention one of the most essential aspects of the argument he had come to discuss with him.

Craig had omitted that Bebe had accused him of being gay. Not because he hadn’t wanted to share that with Tweek, but because he wasn’t ready to say something of that weight out loud _._ Craig was kind of superstitious like that – to him, saying things aloud were analogous to making them real. 

Tweek chewed his lip and deciding it wasn’t a point worth arguing he tried for a different approach.

“… You didn’t sleep with her right?”

“No. Thank god. Everyone thinks I should have though.”

Tweek gave him a look that Craig couldn’t decipher. It was one of sadness and relief and a whole slew of other things that maybe there weren’t words for, but it made Craig feel a lot like he was being pawed at longingly through a plate of glass.

“I don’t think you should have,” Tweek said, and hearing it made Craig feel a stirring of feeling in the numb places in his stomach and chest. “But uhm… what do I know? I mean, I’ve never really liked anyone per say? I was always so nervous and distracted and I guess I never figured out how. But I wish I had waited until I met someone I cared about before I had sex with them.”

His eyes flickered briefly away from Craig to the corner of the room, and they rested there for a few moments like he was actually seeing and staring at something, trying to figure out what it was, before he looked back.

“Does that help at all?” he asked unsurely, and Craig nodded, turning in his seat to look to the corner Tweek had been peering into so intently.

There was nothing there. He returned his attention to Tweek and drained his cup.

“Yeah. But sex or no sex, I wish I had done it sooner. Instead of doing it like that”

Craig felt a rush of guilt flaring up again, an he forced it down. Defensiveness at her accusations was only going to make the situation worse and he _knew_ that, but he couldn’t face that aspect of this situation right now. His conscience kept going back to it, the gnawing feeling of culpability at the back of his head, and it was difficult to separate the threads of guilt he felt for hurting Bebe from the threads of guilt he felt about leaving this possibly important part out. He tried to distract himself by watching Tweek’s hands work that weird plastic coil, twisting it then stretching it out and then twisting it all the way up again while he was thinking. Craig noticed his hands were trembling as he worked it over.

“Letting her humiliate herself you mean?”

Craig nodded.

“I guess so.”

Tweek gave him a sickly little smile.

“Liking a person as much as she likes you seems terrifying and complicated. I don’t think I would cope with that. I cant think of anything worse than having a crush and not being able to tell if they like you back, and it would probably make me horribly sick.”

Craig sighed, missing the carefully placed emphasis on certain parts of that statement, and wished he had another cup of hot tea to clasp his hands around securely. He nodded and reached up to pull his hat off his head.

“It’s horrible.” He confirmed, “Like you don’t have control over a significant part of yourself. Like you don’t know what you might do if you let your guard down.”

He heard Tweek suck a deep breath of air into his lungs and stop playing with his weird plastic toy.

“You like someone?” he asked. And Craig was too tired, too weary of pretending, to lie about it. He nodded, and pulled the duvet up to cover his chin and conceal his emotional soft places.

“Unfortunately. But before you ask, I will never, ever, _ever_ tell you who it is.”

…


	14. The big book of Baby's First Schrodinger's Cat Metaphors for Dummies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> laughs a lot b/c im really sleepy right now and i will edit it later ok i promise.

Craig wanted an awful lot to invite himself over for the night at Tweek’s again, but he didn’t want to be too presumptuous and besides, he didn’t know if Tweek would be working anyway. How the three members of the Tweak family managed to run a twenty-four-hour coffee shop between them was an enigma, and Craig had never been the best at puzzles so he had never really had the inclination to ask. What _were_ Tweek’s regular hours? Did he ever do the night shifts alone or did he prefer to loiter in playgrounds and watch movies when Craig wasn’t there to mind the coffee store with him? The question was innocuous but he felt kind of like he was being nosy wondering, and as such he refrained from asking whether or not he would even be _able_ to sleep over again here. In this perfect, quiet corner of the world.

Craig kind of wished he could stay here forever. Here he was away from eyes and away from complications with his friends, and he was away from Bebe and the meaningless social rituals which made his life hell because really, Tweek just seemed immune to these things – being around him was like being in a security bubble. His presence was equal to being wrapped up in cotton and held, and that _wasn’t_ just because Tweek had wrapped him in a duvet and let him put his feet up in his lap. As they sat on the sofa watching a movie, Craig wasn’t really paying all that much attention. How could he, when all he was thinking about was how safe he felt? How calm and content. And how nice Tweek’s hands felt brushing the tops of his bare feet.

He did feel a faint niggle of discomfort, however, noting that Tweek’s mood had decreased quite significantly since he had opened the door to him earlier that morning, and that even though his eyes were fixed on the TV screen they were glassy as though he wasn’t really seeing anything. The loud sounds of chainsawing, and the screams of seventies teens with stiff, unyielding nipples weren’t even making him wriggle inn his seat, and Craig wanted to ask if there was something wrong even though he knew that Tweek would brush him off. Was it something Craig had said? Was Tweek mad at him?

Maybe it was just because he was sick – at about twenty minutes into the film Tweek had to go to the bathroom to make himself throw up, and when Craig asked him how he could stand up and quietly make a point of announcing it before departing Tweek told him that it was more a comfort thing – his stomach felt like it was being wrung like wet sheets and he needed to go poke at his tonsils until he brought it all up. A mental image Craig didn’t particularly care for but one he could sympathise with all the same.

If Tweek had asked _his_ opinion on the matter, he would have told him quite happily that he didn’t think doubling his dosage of the pills most likely causing his difficulties was going to help him at all. But Tweek did not.

Instead, when the movie was over, he stood up and flitted about the room in a way that made it clear without words he was ready for Craig to leave, and even though he knew he shouldn’t be Craig was quite hurt by all of this. When he checked his phone, he saw that it was seven thirty eight pm.

They parted on the doorstep and as Craig walked he thought that it was cold, outside the comfort of Tweek’s lounge, and it was lonely, having to listen to his own thoughts as he trudged his way back home.

…

Craig was in the kitchen making himself a toasted sandwich when it happened. He probably should have expected it, sure, but for some reason he did not and so he answered his phone unsuspecting, carefully wedging the device between his shoulder and his ear as he levered his crispy golden dinner off the grilling iron he had been using to cook it. The voice which came through the line when he answered was so cold and so furious he almost dropped the food on the kitchen floor. And that would have been terrible because not only would he have missed out on a meal, but he also probably would have had to clean the whole mess up.

“You,” the voice informed him, in a clipped tone he recognised almost instantly, “Are a _despicable_ person Craig. Do you know that?”

Craig fumbled with his hot sandwich, and a napkin and tried to navigate a mess of words and the horrible lump of lead which had fallen into his stomach simultaneously. He had a pretty good idea, sure, but for some reason hearing it said aloud in Wendy’s voice made it all very intensely real and he wasn’t sure he liked it all that much.

“I what now?”

“You’re disgusting. The worst human being who ever lived. Do you have _anything_ to say for yourself before I walk over there and kick your ass?”

“… I just wanted to make a toasted sandwich!”

He realised after he said it that Wendy neither knew he was in the process of making a sandwich, nor cared whether or not he would eventually get to eat the end product. She was, in fact, talking about Bebe, and while her outrage was understandable Craig didn’t thing there was anything he could say to her that he hadn’t said to Bebe already. He wasn’t interested! It was what it was. Nothing more to it.

Also, he was straight. Seriously.

“I mean, not really? Don’t come over. My parents will be so fucked off.”

His parents were not actually home. But he felt like he should say it anyway because he didn’t want to handle a furious young woman standing on his doorstep. God, why were girls so horribly defensive?! Why did they have to take everything so personally?

“Good!” she yelled at him, and Craig winced, depositing his sandwich onto the bench and holding his phone a few centimetres away from his ear. “Would they be fucked off to know you’ve been going around smashing up peoples hearts as well?”

“Wendy! I never liked Bebe! I told her that!”

“I know! She told me! But you do realise that by neglecting to tell her you were technically leading her on?”

Craig groaned and leaned against the bench tiredly. For some reason, suddenly and without explanation, he found that his feet had become quite sore. His eyelids heavy. Was it really only 9pm? He was ready for the dark and unthinking peace that was sleep.

“Was I?”

She was telling him something Craig had already had a feeling about. An unfortunate something he hadn’t wanted to put into words because it made him feel like a shitty person. Shittier than he actually was even, and that was saying something. _Had_ he been leading her on? Was not saying anything as bad as saying ‘yes’ even when he meant to say ‘no way’.

“Yes you were! You let her move in on you and you never once indicated you weren’t interested.”

“I thought my relative indifference to the things she said was kind of a clear hint. Also, just clearing this up quickly, I’m not gay if that’s what she told you, so-”

Wendy didn’t care. She carried on as if he didn’t say anything. “You took her on a date!”

“City Wok is hardly a date.”

And this time, she fell silent, as though she had nothing to say to contest this, and Craig could hear her fuming, struggling to find words to express her rage on the other end of the line.

“Bebe has been inconsolable!”she said finally. “She really liked you, you know. More than she’s ever liked anyone! And you didn’t even give her a chance.”

“I. Don’t. Like. Her. Jesus, why am I suddenly such hot property? I’m really not the best boyfriend material!”

“Bebe’s reasons for liking you, while numerous, are her own. I’m just calling to say you are crass and you should be ashamed for what you did.”

Craig nodded stupidly even though she couldn’t see him, and switched ears with his phone. He felt kind of numb and embarrassed at being called like this. Kind of like he did in primary school when he called the teacher ‘Mom’ that one time and he got scolded for it. He had tried so hard to distract himself from these worries with Tweek, but Tweek wasn’t here in the bland, brightly lit Tucker kitchen so Craig could hardly crawl behind him and hide from his guilty conscience. He had at _least_ thought he would have until tomorrow to sort this out in his head. Maybe things would look better after a sound nights sleep? Maybe he would know what to do and he would be able to face the subject instead of skirting around it. Maybe everything would just take care of itself, while he was resting.

“I am ashamed.” He told her flatly. “But this was just what happened. I should have told her sooner and I’m sorry.”

Craig had never realised before how much of a complete pacifist he was. He wasn’t even sure if he was saying it because he meant it, or if it was just because he wanted to avoid drama. But it was probably because he wanted to avoid drama – everything Craig did from procrastinating on turning Bebe down to neglecting to tell his friends that he was actually a happy employee of Tweak Bros. coffee was in the spirit of avoiding drama and it was kind of boring really, but Craig _liked_ his life ordinary and drama-free. Did that make him evil and deserving of this whole unpleasant series of incidents?

Wendy sucked a breath through her teeth down the line, and there was a strange buzzing in the background of the call. A noise like snowfall that made her sound like she was a lot more than a few blocks away.

“Maybe you should tell her that.” She said coolly. Craig remembered with a ridiculous twist in his chest that this was exactlywhat he told Tweek _he_ should have done.After he accidentally had sex with someone and had to back out. Apologise. Make it alright.

Craig bowed his head and gazed at his cooling toasted sandwich, dropped on the bench and looking as miserly and tragic as a sandwich ever has.

“You’re right.” He said quietly, poking at a corner of his meal and thinking that after this call, he had lost his appetite. “I will do that. As soon as possible.”

Wendy made a noise of affirmation and hung up her phone.

…

It was four am.

Craig lay awake staring at his clock and listening carefully to hear if Donnie and Mojo were stirring, and even though he had been thinking about getting out of bed to talk to them for the last twenty minutes he still hadn’t done so. Instead he kept glancing periodically at his cellphone, willing a text massage from someone to come through, because he was tired and he felt empty and like he needed someone to reach out to _him_ right now, and not the other way around.

He pressed the button to light the screen, and the brightness made his eyes ache but still there were no new messages. Chewing the inside of his cheek he opened his phonebook and looked at his contacts. Token. Clyde. Jimmy. When he got to ‘T’, Tweek was there, and Craig’s stomach dropped when he remembered that he had set a photo of him smoking out side the coffee shop as his ID photo a few days ago. It was a relief see a familiar face. Even if it did remind him of the uneasy feeling he had earlier, that he had said or done something to piss his friend off.

Uselessly, he read through the last weeks worth of messages between them, and found nothing that could possibly have been construed as offensive or upsetting. He opened a new message, decided against it, and turned off his phone screen, before he realised he couldn’t lie still and tried opening another new message to send him. Just a quick one, that didn’t give away the depth of how fucked up he was feeling right now inside.

He deleted it before he sent it though, and with a groan he turned over onto his belly, burying his face deep into his pillow.

He couldn’t stand this. He couldn’t _bear_ it. He had too talk to someone and even if it was Clyde it wouldn’t matter because his skin felt like it was crawling and his blood felt like it had started moving backwards in his veins. Something wasn’t right, and there was no specific _cause_ he could identify other than the nebulous fear that Bebe might start telling more people he was gay and that he had somehow inadvertently pissed off Tweek, and the fact that tomorrow he would have to get up and deal with the consequences of rejecting someone when he didn’t actually want to take a tiny shred of responsibility for it. All of these things were primarily mental blocks too - Craig was usually a fairly simple and clear headed person, so trying to deal with all of these things at once were making his body and his head do strange things. He thought of the person in his contacts most likely to even be _awake_ at four am (who wasn’t Tweek) and even though he didn’t really want to he ended up texting Kenny.

_Any chance you are loitering around my parts tonight?_

He wasn’t really expecting a reply in the affirmative.

_Are you making a booty call or sth?_

And then

_Kidding, kidding.  I can be at your house in ten minutes._

Craig set his phone down on the side table and tried to force himself to lie still while he waited. The bedside clock ticked over to four seventeen, and he had to remind himself that this wasn’t a dream. This was his realityand Kenny McCormick was coming over to sit in his room in the dark and listen to him talk about his shitty mess of a love life.

Fuck. Why did he call _Kenny_ again? Of all people?

The whole scenario made him want to snigger like a hysterical fool, and when he heard the quiet buzz of his phone vibrating a few minutes later he pulled himself out of bed and slunk across the room as quietly as he could.

Sure enough, there was a figure standing outside in his backyard, and when he pushed up his bedroom window and leaned down to stare at him he noted that the air outside was freezing. His arms rose in goose pimples and he wished he had thought to grab a shirt before creeping over here in his boxers.

The figure raised a hand, and shaking a little Craig gestured for him to just fucking climb up the drain pipe already. Kenny was a pro at that kind of shit – he had been doing it to girls all over the town for years. The shadowy shape made a thumbs up, and a low creaky groan from the PVC pipe by his window made Craig turn away because he didn’t want to watch this. What if Kenny fell and broke his back or something? Then Craig would have to phone the ambulance and that would be a whole new genre of unnecessary tragedy he didn’t want to get involved in.

He needn’t have worried.

Kenny was a surprisingly quiet person, and he had himself up sliding through the window before he broke his silence and cursed because he very nearly lost his balance. Craig caught his arm and hissed swear words at him, but clearly unfazed Kenny just let himself land on the carpet in Craig’s room with a soft laugh, and as soon as he had done so Craig closed the window to ensure that there was no more warm air being let out. Craig could smell weed and alcohol on him, and he hated it, but not in the way that it would have been logical to hate it. Knowing that Kenny was someone who went out some evenings and got fucked up with drugs and similar substances made Craig feel square as hell, like he was missing out on something integral to being alive and youthful, even though really he had no desire to partake in such activities. He kept his voice low, and pointed to the chair next to his desk.

“Take your coat off.” He whispered. “You stink.”

Kenny shrugged and unzipped his parka, slinging it over the chair and tip-toeing carefully over to Craig’s bed. Of course, he ended up stepping on the squeaky floorboard on the way, and Craig felt himself tense, but his sister didn’t knock on his wall to tell him to shut up so hopefully she was still just asleep. The bed rustled a little when Kenny sat down, and Craig almost told him to cut it out when he started undoing his boots but then he realised that unless he wanted mud and god only knew what else in his sheets, this was probably a good thing.

“You must be pretty desperate,” Kenny told him, in a whisper that sounded a bit like he had a chest cold. “To be hitting me up at this hour. What’s up?”

Craig sat down next to him, drew in a deep breath of that weedy, kind of unsanitary smell, and very nearly said ‘Nothing, actually. Nothing at all.’

“I’m lonely.” He muttered eventually, after he had lain back down and mostly concealed his face in pillow. “And I think I fucked everything up.”

Kenny didn’t move or say anything for a moment, before he sighed and placed his boots carefully down next to the side of the bed. He reclined next to Craig without even asking, but oddly Craig didn’t care.

“Bebe?”

“And Tweek.”

Kenny coughed quietly and turned onto his side, so that they were almost nose to nose and despite the darkness Craig could see the freckles on the smooth planes of his cheekbones. When he spoke, his breath smelled like gin.

“Okay…? So why did you message me?” he asked, not unkindly. “I mean, you and me are good bros but its not like we’re _super_ close or anything.”

Craig didn’t like being told something he was already aware of, and he felt himself blush to be reminded that he didn’t actually _have_ many intimate friends. He had never had any need for them. And now he regretted that because if he only had made more effort to find some maybe he wouldn’t be struggling with the slowly dawning embarrassment inherent in calling on someone like Kenny for emotional support.

“No reason.” He lied, “I just wanted company and I didn’t know who else to talk to. Token and Clyde…”

He wanted to say that they were assholes who wouldn’t understand what he was going through, but then Kenny wasn’t really the sort to understand complex emotional issues either. Kenny nudged him gently backwards so there was enough room for both their heads to rest on Craig’s pillow. The bed felt different curving under the weight of two bodies, and suddenly Craig remembered that this was the bed he had lain in when Bebe had accused him of being homosexual.

And it was the bed he had thought about fingerfucking himself in for years now.

And Kenny was right there next to him in it, and Craig couldn’t even find it in himself to feel violated or intruded upon or anything. Maybe it was just because Kenny had a way of sneaking into peoples sheets unnoticed, or maybe Craig was just up way past his bedtime. Why ever it was, he didn’t care – he shrugged and Kenny tisked as though this wasn’t something new or unusual to him. Perhaps sitting up at all hours of the night and keeping sad lonely people company was a hobby. Besides giving them sex or alcohol, that is.

“And here I was thinking you were trying to solicit sexual favours.” He muttered. “Goddamnit Craig, one day I will convince you. You _know_ I will.”

“That isn’t helping.” Craig tried very hard to ignore it, just like he ignored every other subtle flirtation Kenny made to himself or anyone else anywhere, because it seemed to be default mode for Kenny so despite how much Craig loathed it, he would have been stupid to expect he would put it on hold just because Craig was stuck in a moment of vulnerability. “Can you just stop with the hormones for a bit and give me some advice?”

“Well I can try. But I’ll warn you now, I am slightly inebriated.”

Craig didn’t want to tell him he smelled like a marijuana liquor factory in fratboy season, so instead he rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, raking his brain over and trying to find order in the swelling crashing ocean of his thoughts.

“… Have you heard from Bebe today?” he asked eventually. Kenny told him no, and despite thinking this answer might bring relief it actually only brought a greater sense of anxiety because what if she wasn’t going to tell anyone? What if she was going to hold this over him forever and he would die a slave to her will because he was too fucking scared to face a rumour that may or may not have a grain of truth in it?

“Should I have?”

“No. I mean… not really. Maybe? We had a pretty big argument today so I dunno…”

And even in the dark, it was easy to see that Kenny was giving him an incredibly quizzical look.

“What about?”

“Oh… you know. How I don’t want to go out with her and stuff…”

It took him a moment, but then he seemed to catch on. When he did, Craig felt his shame double, and because Kenny sucked a deep breath into his lungs like he was going to say something very loud and very angry. But instead, he only said

“Oh. Okay. Sorry I guess.” Even though really, it wasn’t his fault. “That’s rough. I hope she took it okay?”

Craig shook his head, but he didn’t say anything, because the tone of Kenny’s voice suggested that he already knew - Bebe wouldn’t have taken that news well at all.

They fell silent, and Craig closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the sound of Kenny breathing. Of him _existing_ next to him, in the same tight space. His body warmth, the physical sensation of having form… it was alien, but the more he focused on this the calmer he started to feel. The tumultuous environment of his head began to separate, and soon he became aware that he was not just _feeling_ despair but he was watching it too. He was observing himself be miserable, and he was observing the way this misery mingled with longing, and he was conscious of the fact that he was entirely responsible for this whole ridiculous mess. Bebe was going to tell _everyone_ he fucked her over, and then just to pour salt in his wounds he would have to subsequently deal with people calling him gay as hell. This, for the record, was the exact opposite to what Craig could ever have wanted. All he asked from life was to be unnoticed, to be remembered only as the quiet kid who wore a hat and drunk diet soda, and who passed through high school with no major upsets or hiccups and now that whole dream was shattered. Maybe he was coming to terms with this, bit by bit?

Maybe he was sinking even further into self pity.

Craig took a deep breath and opened his eyes. The shadows on his ceiling seemed less deep than they had earlier, and he could feel Kenny’s warmth spreading through him at the places they were touching. He wanted to say he didn’t feel so lonely, now that someone else was here, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the wrong someone, and that despite not saying anything or pressing for further elaboration Kenny was _waiting_ for something from him. Like he was wondering something that Craig didn’t want to expand upon. He missed the unquestioning trust Tweek seemed to have in his recounts of events, and felt even worse for omitting the panic Bebe’s accusations had caused him when he had the opportunity to share them with him.

“She called me gay.” He said finally, and the words came out like he was still numb with shock to hear them. Kenny propped himself up onto his elbow and peered hard into Craig’s face, like he was trying to sift through the feelings and fears hidden in the shadows pooling there.

“She was probably just saying it because she had hurt feelings.” Kenny told him carefully. “Some people will say anything if they are upset.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know it. But even if you were gay, does that matter? If you don’t like her, you don’t like her. It’s as simple as that.”

Craig nodded again, and blinked in an effort to stop the dry itchy feeling in his eyes. He had already cried enough tears over this stupidity.

“I guess so.” He said quietly. “But it gave me a fright I guess. And I feel so bad for leading her on! And then I couldn’t even tell Tweek what happened afterward. It’s all just a huge fuck up and I’m miserable about it.”

“You _want_ to tell Tweek that kind of stuff?”

Craig heard a trace of dislike wiggle its way into the surprise which propped up Kenny’s voice.

“Yeah.” He said, half way defiantly. “I do. Even if you hate him he’s still a really nice person.”

“I’m sure he is. But you have to admit Craig, he’s powerful weird.”

This was an understatement so elegant, Craig snorted, and he had to clap his hand over his mouth in surprise.

“Well he is!”

“I know he is Ken, but I _like_ him. And I really, really want him to like me. I don’t want to tell him stuff which will make him think I’m a shitty person? Bebe already hates me, and if she tells Token and Clyde she thinks I’m gay then they will probably end up hating me too.”

Kenny huffed, and pushed a few tendrils of hair out of his eyes.

“They will not.” He said dismissively, and Craig felt a sharp pang of annoyance that what he was saying clearly wasn’t registering as quite so grave in Kenny’s mind. This was _his_ pity party after all, and Kenny was supposed to be here solely to make him feel better about his life, so how dare he not play along with his efforts to revel in sorrow?  “You’re such a black and white person Craig. Everything is either hunky dory or complete status FUBAR with you. She got mad, she embarrassed you, you probably deserve a little revenge but no-one is going to _believe_ her if she goes around spreading shitty rumours. Why would they? Most people would probably just come to the conclusion she’s just saying it to fuck you off.”

He gave Craig a look so penetrating that he could feel it even through the darkness.

“This never would have happened if you had told her the truth.”

And Craig had heard that enough times today to be _angry_ , that he would even bring that up right now.

“This never would have happened,” he started, his voice breaking the whisper line that had previously tempered their exchange, “If you hadn’t given her my fucking number!”

It was an old argument, a trespass he had kind of forgiven over the course of time, but it was a convenient point to raise now so he wasn’t going to pass that opportunity up.

“Hey! Don’t pin this on me man, I was trying to help you _out._ You always looked so lonely standing around wrapped up in your own head, and I figured it would be good for you to get a little hands on experience with people. A good fuck would probably really help your self-esteem you know.”

“My self-esteem was fine!”

And it was. Craig had never had any issues with himself before right now. Kenny scoffed like he didn’t believe that, and properly furious Craig turned back onto his side to face him, so they were almost nose to nose and face to face.

“Why are you laughing? I’m serious. I never had a problem until this whole thing happened.”

“And yet, I have _never_ seen you look even part way happy in your whole entire life.”

The duvets rustled as Kenny re-arranged his legs and Craig felt the hairs on his arms stand on end when their legs touched together softly. Kenny’s ankles were large and bony, and the denim on his jeans was soft and worn. Craig opened his mouth to argue, he even had a good point perched on the tip of his tongue, but he lost it somewhere between his breathing and the way that Kenny leaned into him as he made himself more comfortable.

Kenny moved like he was old and sore. Like he wasn’t as high as the weed he smoked should have made him and the alcohol in his stomach was like tar or iron in his bones. He moved like someone who had been moving for centuries, who knew how to be in his body, and Craig had never noticed before because before he had only ever seen him in the light. In the darkness, Craig could sense it, and he envied that feeling of _belonging_ in his fleshy avatar. Of being fused with it, because so often Craig went through life forgetting he had a face and hands and a machine through which he could mediate his mind and his environment, and sometimes in moments his guard was down he caught a glimpse of his hands and it always took ten seconds for him just to register that those were him and really, it was a truly bizarre thing to be alive.

“So maybe it can take a bruising.” Kenny told him. And maybe he was right. Craig gave in, he groaned from the deepest caverns in his chest, and washed out and wrecked and unable to stop himself he let his forehead fall forward to rest against that of his company.

“Do you think I’m being stupid?” he asked, and Kenny nodded, bringing up a hand to rest in Craig’s hair. A wave of tingles ran down his back, from where the warmth of his hand touched his scalp.

“Yeah. But we are all kind of stupid sometimes.”

“Do you think I should apologise properly then?”

“Why not? Take her to lunch or something. Buy her a gift. A sweet apology can fix any problem, right?”

“Right.”

And Craig closed his eyes, trying as hard as he could to regain the sense of calmness he had found a little earlier, but he couldn’t because the more he focused on Kenny’s hand touching him, the harder his heartbeat thumped inside his chest. The more he focused on the feeling of having someone else with him, the more he wanted to pull closer and push him away simultaneously, and soon he was lost in a gravity filed where he couldn’t move in case he got too close and Kenny noticed something as up, or he pulled too far away and drew attention to himself. That surreal feeling he had had, when Bebe had been only half as close as this and angling for a handful of his cock, was starting to return, except now he wasn’t thinking about the possibility of fucking _Bebe_ in the next ten minutes he was thinking bout the possibility of fucking Kenny. He was counting the inches between them and thinking that the only thing separating that moment and this moment was his self-control and Kenny’s apparent disinterest in treating him like a potential mate. Both of these were things that could be swayed in passion, though, and Craig knew it just like he knew that under his chest, his heart was throbbing urgently. The elevated pace made his mouth dry and his loins ache, and sharp, vivid images began too surface on his mind.

This was his real life. This was the actual moment he was living in right now, and up until this second he realised that even when he thought himself awake, he had been living in a dream. As much as he tried to remember things before this second, like how Bebe sounded and the name of his mother and father, he could not, because everything false had been lost in static and this was the only real thing in the world.

“Are you okay?” Kenny must have noticed the cold sweat breaking on his shoulders, and the way his breathing was getting short and shallow. Craig nodded, and felt a part of himself collapse inward as he pressed closer. Kenny’s T-shirt was light and warm and under the smell of booze he could smell cheap soap and clean sweat.

“Hold onto me for a bit?”

“Oh god, okay. Are you sure you’re alright?”

Warm arms curled around his shoulders, and a nose pressed against the side of his neck. Their bodies were touching, from chest to thigh to toe, and Craig had _never_ been this close to anyone. It was a lot more awkward than he imagined, all the limbs and all the volume of someone else’s flesh, but it was also very grounding and it made him flush hot in places that previously only flickered on and off in sync with intrusive thoughts. The ones that kind of plagued everyone sometimes, about walking up to a stranger one day and finding true love.

“I miss you.” He said, and it was true, even though really Kenny had never been there for him to begin with. Maybe in reality his missed the _idea_ of Kenny. The simplicity of having someone at a distance who he could see and dream about, without harsh edges or his own problems or even a mind with which he might decide to go out and get stoned or spend lazy Sunday afternoons talking with Butters about the future. Craig missed the straightforward nature of a person to project on, a prize on a pedestal he could never hope to reach, and as he lay there wrapped up in someone else’s body he thought he never should have taken his eyes away, he never should have let himself get distracted by Bebe or by Tweek because when he looked back he wasn’t seeing The same Kenny any more. He was seeing a person he wanted but he didn’t know why because really, there was nothing about Kenny that made him different from anyone else to Craig. He was just a pretty face, and Craig was empty and horny, and he gripped the other boy like he was the last thing anchoring him to planet earth.

Was this what growing up is supposed to feel like?

A lump rose in Craig’s throat when Kenny’s nose brushed his ear, and his cheek rubbed against Craig’s as he moved their faces so they were millimetres between them. Craig remembered that Kenny had slanted blue eyes. He had freckles and wide, thin lips, and his arms were covered in scars from incidents Craig could only imagine in his lifetime. He was like hot stones on a sunny day, and like woodsmoke in the middle of winter, and he was heavy and he was familiar and he was earthly in his pleasures and his intellect. He was the most real thing that ever existed, but when he let his face tip towards Craig’s and kissed him he suddenly exploded into nothing. He dissolved, he disappeared, and the only thing left was the way that Craig ached for someone to move inside of him and pull out whatever it was making him want to twist and writhe against the sheets. Distantly, he was aware that Kenny kissed well, with tongue and a well practiced pace that made his skin prickle independently of his mind. He kissed like he was a virtuoso, like he was pushing buttons on a game and while it was working in the physical sense, Craig felt numb in his mind and the feelings of his nerves were faded and washed out, like reception on a crappy TV aerial. It wasn’t _right_. It wasn’t _good_. But he did it anyway because he was too tired to resist.

He rolled backward and pulled the other body on top of him. The bedsprings creaked and as he parted his lips to let a warm tongue press inside his mouth he lifted his hips up. His dick was hard, but he didn’t really understand why.

Although it felt unreal, and wrong, he probably would have gone all the way with it if Kenny hadn’t bit the side of his neck and made him moan. The noise must have stirred his sister, because within twenty seconds he heard the sound of a book or something being thrown at the separating wall between them.

“ _It’s only four thirty am_!”

And when they parted it felt like the end of something Craig had spent almost seventeen years preparing for.  


	15. Objects in the mirror may be drunker than they appear.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *mis-spells the word 'Craig' fifty times in one paragraph without noticing*

He was really, really, _really_ dreading going back to work.

It was funny, how the days that came in the aftermath seemed empty and sleepless, and they seemed to go on forever so no matter what Craig did to fill the time he found there was always more of it remaining. Eventually, all he found himself doing he was lying on the sofa in the drowning in languor and watching the second hands on the clock tick by in a way that seemed far slower than it used to. He kept starting and stopping, trying to pick up things and remember what it was he had originally enjoyed in them, but honestly he was starting to question if he had ever really truly enjoyed anything at all. Maybe his whole life had been a delusion. Maybe enjoyment was a myth. Maybe there was really nothing pleasurable in thee world, and Craig would be better off now to just crawl into bed and sleep for the next sixty years of his life until he died.

And where usually, knowing he would soon get to see Tweek would have cheered him, the notion now filled him with a shameful kind of trepidation. He isn’t sure why this was, exactly, but it may have had something to do with the fact that he hadn’t made any effort to contact him since they last saw each other, and Tweek also had not been forthcoming with any social gestures in the interim. Craig felt a little bit embarrassed, and he was very scared that the second Tweek saw him he would know that he was different to how he had been last time they met. Not in a physical sense, because he still definitely _looked_ the same, and when he stood in front of his mirror saying phrases to hear the sound of his voice he still sounded like himself, but in terms of mental state. There was something missing now, something which had given him his bearing in life, and he was sure that Tweek with his uncanny skills of perception would notice him flitting around like he was weightless and insubstantial.

Every time he closed his eyes he remembered what it had been like to be that close to Kenny. He remembered the cold stillness that overcame him as Kenny rolled off him an they lay there side by side staring into the darkness, and he remembered that after a while, when the sun started rising and the first rays of morning light leaked through his bedroom window, Kenny had stood up and left and no one said anything because there was nothing to be said. Nothing but the guilty way Craig gripped the other boys hand like it was concrete around his feet and he was diving into depths deeper than the Marianas trench.

Even though Craig knew he _should_ be paralyzed with anxiety over whether or not Kenny would tell anyone, he couldn’t really care a single bit.

He couldn’t find it in himself to care any more. Not about Kenny, and not about Bebe, and not about anything except avoiding Tweek and the inevitable questions that would come with showing up at work like a zombie the approaching evening.

_“What’s wrong with you?”_

Of course, he would say it coldly because Tweek would still be mad at him for no apparent reason, and Craig knew he would probably break down because that just seemed like the kind of thing he was disposed to do lately, and everyone involved would suffer great pains of humiliation so really, he didn’t see the point in even _trying_ to dress nicely in preparation for his shift. He wore the navy chinos his mother got him on sale from DresSmart and the first hoodie he found on his bedroom floor. It was the one he got at space camp three years ago, so it was a good size and a half too small for him. When he pulled his hat on, and gave himself a liberal spraying with a can of axe, he noticed that his hair was in need of a cut because even though he had it trimmed before summer started, his bangs were already back falling into his eyes.

When he got to work, he didn’t even bother to say hello. His apron was hanging in the usual place and silently he shuffled across the shop floor to retrieve it. Tweek looked up from what he was doing in the sinks and peeled off the latex gloves he was wearing as he passed. Craig would have taken the time to notice that he looked tired and kind of washed out, but quite alert, if he hadn’t been too busy struggling with a task as basic as tying his goddamned uniform.

“… Want some help?” Tweek asked him coolly, and feeling a lump rise in the back of his throat already Craig nodded, his arms falling limp to his sides and his head bowed so he was staring at the skirting board running around the edge of the shop floor.

Oh god. Now he was here, in the bright lights and clean tiles and the smell of coffee was getting in his nose, the thought of surviving for even a single night seemed impossible. Monumental. Like scaling Mount Everest armed with a toothpick and a copy of hustler magazine. He was never so convinced that he couldn’t do something in his whole life.

Tweek’s shoes made a faint clicking sound on the floor when he approached, and Craig saw but didn’t really register that he was wearing a pair of boots he had never seen him wear before.

“Nice shoes.” He mumbled, lifting his arms to allow Tweek to tie him into his uniform. Tweek thanked him tersely and placed his hands carefully on Craig’s shoulders.

“Turn around and look at me?” he asked.

Craig obliged, lifting his eyes but finding himself unable to meet his gaze. Instead he stared at the space just to the left of his face, so he could see that Tweek was still wearing the same beanie he had been wearing some days earlier, and that he seemed to have a split on the corner of his bottom lip. He looked good, in an off beat arthouse way that made Craig want to close his eyes and block him out. He wasn’t real either was he? How could he be? There was nothing really this perfect in this shitty world.

“Are you mad at me?” Craig asked him, before Tweek could ask if he was okay. Tweek frowned and tilted his head just an increment.

“No?” he said in response, but Craig noted with a wry sense of amusement that he was a shitty liar. The worst. “Why? Are y _ou_ mad at me?”

Craig shook his head and dragged his hat off his hair.

“Can you make me a coffee?” he asked, and Tweek let his hands drift down Craig’s biceps and his arms until they were standing face to face, bitten and bruised fingers wrapped questioningly around Craig’s wrists. His pulse elevated when he thought Tweek might do it. He might ask the question, he might make the whole fragile façade come tumbling down. But Tweek must have been really mad because after a few seconds he set his jaw and released his wrists, the decision that whatever it was, he didn’t care that much written all over his face.

“Sure, okay. Whatever.You can start mopping the floor.” He said softly, turning away and returning to his post behind the counter. “Feel free to take your time, it looks like we are going to be in for a quiet night.”

…

There were three drained coffee cups sitting next to him on the table, but Craig felt no more perky than he had when he arrived so he stayed where he was while Tweek mixed up the batter for baking and cut the bread for sandwiches all in preparation for the food he would serve customers tomorrow. At the back of his mind, Craig wondered if Tweek was still as sick as he had been a few days ago, but even though the question felt heavy in his mouth he didn’t want to ask in case he got madder. Instead he rested his head on the pillow of his arms and closed his eyes, counting his breaths in time with the low-frequency buzzing of the fluorescent lights overhead. His shift would be over soon, he kept telling himself. Six am and he could go home. Right now it was three thirty, and he had made it the whole night so far without having to make conversation with his workmate. There hadn’t been an evening as awkward as this since the very first one, and this would have been an achievement of the humorous variety if Craig wasn’t feeling so shitty about everything. He couldn’t even text Kenny or Bebe to distract himself - His isolation was complete, and every now and then his mind kept going back, as it had for the last two nights, to the incident that had fucked everything up so thoroughly.

It was almost 72 hours since he let Kenny into his bedroom. Almost three full days of living a life of no meaning and no direction. It was almost 4320 minutes since he felt what it felt like to have someone’s body against his erection, and 259200 seconds since he had his first ever kiss with another boy. It felt like longer than that, but in another way entirely it felt like it had never happened. Like this was a dream he might wake up from any moment.

If it was a dream, however, he probably would have stirred when something heavy and human shaped dropped into the seat opposite him in his booth, and he jerked up in shock because he hadn’t even noticed Tweek approaching, or the sound of beans grinding as he made himself a tall cappuccino, or the clatter of baking trays being slid in the oven and thus concluding the list of tasks that Tweek’s father had left scribbled on the back of a menu for them that evening.

“I’d offer you another coffee but uh… I think you’ve had enough.” He gave Craig a chilly little smile and lifted the mug up to hide the better part of his face. Craig grunted, and went to put his head back down on his arms again.

“If you’ve come over here to make me feel bad for pissing you off, you don’t have to bother. I’m already about as dead as its possible to be inside right now.”

“… What? How have you pissed me off?”

“That’s what I want to know!” Craig sat up, and he glared at Tweek with ever iota of will he could muster. Which for the record, was not much. “You’ve been giving me the cold shoulder since I’ve seen you last. Did I say something? What’s wrong?”

Tweek shifted uncomfortably in his spot and chewed the inside of his cheek as he thought how to answer. From a lower angle, he looked kind of older than Craig knew he was. And less ill. But about the same level of nervous.

“Nothings _wrong_.” He said after a while, in a very measured kind of way. “I just… I dunno. I’m still sort of sick I guess? Not like the _sick_ sick way. Just… other stuff. Head stuff. I uh…” he trailed off, eyes flickering up and fixing on a spot just outside the window next to Craig’s head. It reminded Craig of the way he had looked over his shoulder the other day at his house, and not entirely at ease Craig turned to check if there was something there he wasn’t aware off, or if Tweek was just staring into space like a weirdo. The street outside the window was just as deserted and dark as ever, despite the way it was being studied like there was someone or something out there going about its business, and when Craig looked back an expression of concern had come over Tweek’s face that really didn’t help his sense of discomfort.

“Everything okay?”

Sharp eyes turned back to him, Tweek’s lips thinning and his chest rising as he sucked a deep breath of air into his lungs.

“Yeah.” He said tightly. “Of course. Sorry. Like I said. I’ve been pretty stressed lately and trying to come to terms with some stuff that’s been happening in my life. So mm.” He shrugged and had a mouthful of coffee. The lights in the coffee house flickered in the precise same manner they had a week ago when he had been at the height of his sickness but for some reason, tonight he was completely unfazed. Despite his relative misery, Craig felt the hairs on his arms prickle with a primitive coldness. Like there was something very wrong with this situation that he was ignorant to, and Tweek was trying to ignore it just like he was trying to ignore that Craig was upset. And also that he was upset with Craig.

Holy fuck. it struck Craig how much of a mess this entire awkward silence really was. Two teenagers with angst and serious communication problems holed up alone in a creepy coffee shop. It was the stuff of horror movies and convoluted romance dramas, but melded up together into a sloppy, poorly executed reality. Craig blinked to stop himself from crying and sat up straight in his seat.

“You want to talk about it?” he asked.

Tweek shook his head and set his coffee down on the table.

“No. It’s stupid. You will laugh at me.”

“I won’t laugh at you.”

That received a look that informed him that actually, Tweek didn’t believe that for a second, and Craig thought suddenly about giving him a good kick under the table. For being a jerk and all that kind of thing.

“Still.”

Out of habit, Tweek went to comb his fingers through his hair. This would have been no problem, had he not been wearing a hat at the time. Craig watched him fumble, confused for a moment, and then flush as he dropped his hand and tried to pretend he hadn’t just done that.

“… New hat?” Craig asked finally, and Tweek shook his head.

“It’s nothing.”

“I was going to ask about it sooner but I assumed it was because you know… you were sick or something?”

“No, that’s unrelated. I just… uh… hm.” His eyes fluttered and he fingered the rim of his coffee mug nervously. “You know that feeling where you just kind of wake up one day, and you don’t recognise yourself in the mirror any more? And you realise that actually, you _can_ do whatever you want to do and technically the only thing stopping you is yourself, so you go and do something _really_ dumb because for one second you think you want to bad enough to ignore the fact it scares you shitless?”

Craig stared at him blankly, not really familiar with that sensation at all and not understanding where that whole spiel had come from. Although, talking about not recognising ones self was something that struck a little close to home, given how long he had spent inspecting his face in the mirror this morning. Maybe he did know the feeling? He wasn’t exactly sure.

“Not really?” he gave Tweek a look and under his gaze, the other boy seemed to shrink in his seat. A distinct sense of anxiety began to bubble in his gut.  “… What did you do?”

Did he finally loose it or something? Did he go on a bender, jack a car and run down a few cops on the way? Did he get high on coke, hide in a bush and attack a passer by because he thought they might have something to do with the rising petrol prices or was Craig’s imagination just running away with him because Tweek had never looked so shamefaced in all his life so surely whatever it was, it must have been a big deal. A horrible occurrence. Something utterly unforgivable that might result in Craig having to call the police or worse, the hospital, and have Tweek carried forcibly away.

“Nothing, nothing.” Came the response. “It was a purely rhetorical question.”

“Why would you even ask that?!”

Craig had forgotten that he was supposed to be worried Tweek was mad at him. Tweek looked more culpable than Clyde did that time he dropped Tokens iphone and broke it. He scratched the back of his neck and shook his head.

“It was a joke.”

“You’re lying.”

“Oh yeah? _You’re_ lying!”

He just mirrored the accusation right back, and Craig stared at him for a few seconds waiting for him to realise what he said and that it made no actual sense whatsoever. When he did, he pulled his chin in and turned his face away.

“Fuck. That was stupid. Oh god, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. But you have to tell me what you did, okay?”

Tweek’s nose screwed up and he pulled his shoulder into a shrug.

“It’s really embarrassing.”

“So? Its kind of freaking me out that you won’t just tell me.”

And Tweek sighed, rubbing his forehead as if he was greatly pained. Craig waited to hear the words ‘I killed… ’ or ‘I set fire to…’ come out of his mouth with baited breath, and he almost didn’t know what on earth was happening when Tweek closed his eyes and pushed his hat back off his head.

“I always wanted to colour my hair.” He said quietly, while Craig just kind of sat there and stared. “But I was scared that I would end up bald or I would have an allergic reaction or everyone would laugh at me so I didn’t.” he tried to smile, but it was clearly empty and miserable. “It looks ridiculous right?”

Craig forced his eyebrows down and closed his jaw, which had kind of fallen open gormlessly without his instruction.

“No!” he said truthfully, sitting up straight. “It looks great! What the fuck Tweek holy shit!”

Tweek chewed his lip and ran his fingers through thick, silvery hair.

“Everyone will stare.” He said quietly, and Craig felt his heart breaking because yeah, people might stare at him, but Craig knew with a sense of jealously that made him want to leap across the table and crush him against his chest that it wouldn’t be _derisive_. Deriding someone like Tweek on the basis of aesthetics would be like deriding pictures of the galaxy. He looked like an angel, pretty like rain on a window in the winter and unreal like Craig was looking at him through a blur filter. Everything about him glowed, even tired with purple bruises under his transparent skin he shone like some celestial body. He was like an illusion, like a dream or a fantasy but Craig didn’t want to _say_ that because that was kind of weird. Instead he swallowed the lump in his throat and turned his eyes away.

“Let them.” He said, hoping that all the unsaid words he was feeling would be heard in his voice and in his breathing. “Who cares? You didn’t do it to impress any of them.”

“Mm.”

Craig curled his toes in his shoes and thought that suddenly, the whole shop had become very hot. His heart was beating kind of faster than usual, and he felt a little light headed.

Maybe it would be a good idea if he laid off the coffee.

…

 

Even though it very nearly killed him, Craig figured he owed it to Bebe to make an effort.

Two days later, most of which he spent either asleep, or standing numbly in the shower watching water spiral down the drain, he packed a lunch of oranges and sandwiches into a plastic Tupperware case and jammed it into his tired school backpack at nine am, ready to head down to the park at meet Bebe at ten. He had negotiated their meeting through a series of terse texts, and where he had agreed to bring lunch she said she would bring a bottle of Diet Double Dew. It wasn’t Craig’s favourite, but as long as it wasn’t poisoned he would be grateful for what he was given.

They were going to have a picnic. Because as stupid as it was, Craig knew that girls like picnics almost as much as they liked one direction. Although Craig’s experience with what females do and do not like was heavily based on knowledge he gleaned from living with his sister. He figured that they should make the most of the good weather as it bowed off stage anyway, and he could work on getting the Vitamin D he was probably severely short on. He could use a good distraction now, because honestly the last several days had been so up in the air and confusing that he wasn’t sure it was healthy for him to just stay there in his bedroom staring at the ceiling and trying to understand what was happening to him.

He met her in the designated location, and despite talking himself up under his breath the whole way there, he couldn’t help his pulse increasing and his intestines squirming as though they had recently been filled with worms and similar distasteful things as he approached.

Bebe was the kind of girl whose prettiness was not exaggerated by sadness. She looked puffy-eyed and like she hadn’t washed her hair for a day or two, but honestly It wasn’t too bad, and she had made the effort to pencil her eyebrows and slick on some lipstick at least. Craig thought that now she was sad he was seeing her for the first time as what she actually _was._ A sad teenaged girl trying to find The One. Craig thought privately that before she found The One she was going to have to find the part of herself which says its okay to not always look like a girl in a magazine, but failing that she could always go back to Clyde who would probably lick the dirt off her shoes even if she looked like a hippo with a bad case of the uglies. Maybe he should low-key bring that up while they were eating? He made a half-hearted note of it, and when he was close enough for it not to be awkward he raised a hand nervously in a wave.

“Hey.”

“Hello.” She stood up straight off the fence she had been leaning on and pulled her thickly knitted red cardigan tighter around her. The Bottle of soda was standing by her feet, and the park was relatively quiet for a weekday morning – three or four kindergarten aged children were on the jungle gyms, and a few parents were sitting around on benches not paying all that much attention. Craig gestured to an empty bench and picnic table combo, with a nice view of the slide and see-saw set, and Bebe shrugged like she wasn’t bothered. She didn’t seem willing to meet his eye, and Craig wasn’t comfortable staring as she bent down to pick up the soda and tuck it under her arm, so he lead the way over and dumped the basket of food he brought with him on the table surface upon arrival. If she was impressed that he had even managed to find an actual basket to put the food in, she didn’t bring it up, dropping down into the seat wordlessly, the corners of her mouth turned downwards in a fashion so tragic it could have been comical. Maybe. If Craig wasn’t feeling entirely responsible for it. He sighed and sat down opposite her, rubbing his sweaty palms on his jeans and trying to order all the fragments of things he knew he should say. There was so much – little bits of thought and feeling and some part of him that wanted to slap her and tell her to wake the fuck up and _look_ at him. He wasn’t that goddamned great. It took him an awkward amount of time too pull an opening point together and when he said it out loud he got the impression that he had missed his opportunity by about two minutes. The background noise of children playing made the hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck stand on end.

“I guess I wanted to apologise.” He said flatly. “For leading you on. Even though I didn’t really. Have some sandwiches?”

Bebe shook her head and sniffed, her lips thinning in either frustration or an effort to resist bursting into tears. Craig was a little annoyed at that response, because he had busted his ass making all those sandwiches that morning, but he brushed it off in favour of drawing a deep breath and adjusting his approach.

“Okay. Sorry. Not for the general situation but for the offering sandwiches. Also, I’m sorry for the general situation. I should have told you… you know?” he cringed, because this conversation was really highlighting how he was about as delicate in conversation as surgeon performing a triple bypass procedure with a butter knife.  “I should have said I wasn’t interested. Not that you aren’t great and pretty and likable and stuff. You’re alright.”

Her eyes flickered up to meet him this time, and he felt his face immediately flood with heat.

This was going so terribly holy shit.

“Great I mean. You’re pretty great.”

“Craig, I really get the feeling you aren’t apologising to make _me_ feel better at all.”

Well Craig was of course utterly stumped with that one.

He stared at her blankly for a couple of seconds, registering with a spreading sense of dread that he was watching her eyes grow colder and colder until she didn’t look sad so much as fucked well off. And if there was one thing which made Bebe less attractive than when she was sad it was when she was fucked right off. It was like her face was morphing into the face of a beast, her eyes narrowing and her cheeks turning splotchy and red. Her fists became tight and hard and white knuckled, and he leaned back a little just in case she decided she wanted to throw one at him. He wouldn’t have been surprised.

“What?”

“You. You’re only apologising because you want _you_ to feel better. You want me to forgive you because you’re loosing sleep over screwing me around.”

“No I’m not!”

It was a lie, and she could tell. She ‘Ha’d and turned her nose up at him coolly.

“Well, Craig, in that case you won’t mind if I _don’t_ forgive you then.”

“What?! You can’t do that!”

Bebe gave him a bitterly triumphant smile, which informed him that actually, she can and she did. He felt a prickle of respect for this girl, even though with every conscious part of him he felt a sense of revulsion so strong it made him want to punch the table they were sitting at. How _dare_ she withhold his relief like this!! That wasn’t fair at all!

“Why not? What are you going to do about it? Tell Kenny on me?”

Craig felt his stomach turn over in horror to hear her bring him up, even though it was obvious she was just pulling a name from thin air. The further away from Kenny they kept this conversation, the better. He was trying not to think about Kenny. He was trying to pretend that person didn’t exist. He wondered sometimes, in moments where he wasn’t fretting about this Bebe mess, when Kenny would find the time or inclination to talk to him again. Had Craig become what he always feared he would – another meaningless fling in a chain of pointless hook-ups?

“Bebe! I’m not just apologising to make myself feel better! I’m apologising because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but things are kind of complicated with me in my head and I don’t want you to have to suffer for that!”

He was sort of surprised that he was able to conjure that excuse out his ass. When Bebe rolled her eyes, she almost looked a little bit like he might have thrown her off and with a rush of relief Craig decided to follow this one down the metaphorical rabbit hole. Perhaps it would be the rabbit hole that ultimately lead to his redemption.

“Whatever.”

“I’m serious! It’s not your fault. I’m a little bit distracted and I’m not the kind of person set up to be dating or liking people a lot of the time. Your advances took me by surprise and I didn’t know how to respond so I ignored it and now we’re here. I didn’t _actively_ try to dick you over. Look at me! I very rarely ‘actively try’ to do anything.”

He wanted to add something in there about not being gay, but thought that might be a little too desperate. Besides, now he had actually tried it he wasn’t sure where he even stood with that whole subject. Had he gone too far now? Was he still even going to be able to go back to living a heteronormative lie? She studied him critically through narrowed eyes. He tensed his legs and resolutely pushed on.

“Have you ever known me to make an effort in anything I’ve ever done in my whole life?” He asked. “Particularly something which requires as much effort as being a –“ he cut himself off before he said ‘tease’, because that didn’t seem like the right word. Bebe cocked a single eyebrow in question however, and he had to exhale and relinquish the end of his sentence.

“Tease.”

And then it was Bebe’s turn too pull a big sigh and shake her head.

“Fuck you Craig.” She told him flatly. “You’re a liar and a coward.”

He wanted to kick himself in the face in frustration. It was trying to rationalise with a brick wall.

“Bebe. Listen to me. I like you. You’re a nice person. But I don’t _like_ you like you and I can’t give you what you are looking for. Why don’t you just stick with Clyde! He’s kind of in love with you and he doesn’t usually make me want to vomit when I’m around him so he can’t be that bad a catch. Mostly. It’s hard for me to be able to reciprocate your feelings because honestly, I don’t _get_ you and I don’t get people like you. You’re mysterious and weird and it makes me uncomfortable because right now I’m too busy trying to sort my own shit out to worry about trying to figure _you_ out too. Do you get me?”

She stared at him like this was the longest speech she had ever heard him give, and Craig was a little embarrassed when he realised this because actually, it was. He very rarely spoke at length to girls, particularly about something like feelings and relationships with other actual human beings.

“So you’re basically saying, it’s not me it’s you?”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. And it’s accurate. Right now is a bad time. This summer has been a _disaster_ for me. Everything is changing and it’s almost like I’m in some kind of mid-puberty crisis. So excuse me for not being able to dive into your pants on the first opportunity.”

Bebe flushed and sucked a breath between her teeth.

“Well, yes.” She admitted hesitantly. “I suppose you never did that…”

“No. And I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew I fucked someone I didn’t care about.”

He thought briefly of Tweek and of his one time lover again. That incident seemed to have gotten under his skin and deep into the grain of his mind. Was that why he had decided to change his hair colour? Did talking about his former sexlife trigger some latent memory he needed to deal with through physical transformation? Tweek must be a stronger man than he.

Bebe sat there in silence for a little while longer, before closing her eyes and sagging at the shoulders, resigned.

“Okay. I accept your apology.” She told him quietly. “But I’m still angry. And I’m sorry for accusing you of being gay, I didn’t mean that.”

Craig felt a tiny breath of relief escape him, but he kept his face serious and nodded.

“Okay.”

“I think it’s probably best if we don’t meet again.”

And Craig agreed with that statement. Whole heartedly.

 

…

 

Now he had the whole Bebe drama wrapped up in a neat little package, Craig still had to deal with the very real concern of Kenny and what on earth he was supposed to do about that.

Normally, he would have been happier to just fret about it, sitting in his room and paining and sleeping and occasionally getting out of bed to shower, but the problem with that was that usually this method involved a few rounds of self-indulgent masturbation to break up the monotony and since the incident, he hadn’t actually been _able_ to jerk off with a clear conscience. His relative success at clearing the air with Bebe, and the way his concern about Tweek being mad at him had kind of just dissolved away like sugar in water over their last couple of shifts, gave him a certain sense of – if not confidence –   _motivation,_ to knot off all the loose ends.

Craig went over to Kenny’s house as soon as he finished not-sleeping after work one morning, and he hoped that even though it was three pm Kenny would still be at home. Possibly sleeping. Preferably not drunk. Sitting around doing whatever he did with his spare time and Craig realised, as he drew close to the beat up looking hovel he knew the McCormick’s called home, that he didn’t actually _know_ what Kenny did in his spare time. He never even asked or bothered to find out.

He chewed the inside of his cheek as he stepped over the lawnmower parts and an old sofa cushion on his way across the lawn to the front door, and thought that even if Kenny was in there he wouldn’t have been able to see Craig coming because the windows of the place were so dirty. They fit right in with the flaking green paint and the hole in the roof fixed with a bright blue tarpaulin.

He almost hesitated to knock on the door, in case it caved in under his fist.

When he knocked, he almost expected no one to answer. Then a horrible thought occurred to him – what if Kenny’s alcoholic father answered? What if his terrifying older brother, who reminded Craig a little bit of leatherface now that he was thinking about it, answered and tried to challenge Craig to an honour fight (as he was apt to do). What if Kenny’s mom answered, and Craig didn’t know what to say, because Kenny’s mom was pretty but she had a broken look about her like shattered glass or a smashed up sink and her eyes were haunted and bitter. She seemed like the kind of person who might spit on him for being dressed in clean clothes and wearing aftershave. Why oh why did Craig decide to shave today anyway? He could have gone another whole week without needing to.

He was surprised and relieved when none of these people answered the door. Instead, a willowy young girl with mousey brown hair and blue hazel eyes did, and she was dressed in an old t-shirt and jeans but even though her outfit was unflattering it wasn’t hard to notice that she was on the cusp of puberty. A couple of years older than his sister maybe? Was this the girl Kenny was fucking today?

His jaw dropped in horror and disgust, and when whoever it was recognised that he was an unfamiliar male obviously staring at the shape her breasts were making under her shirt, she squeaked and drew back. As though she was afraid of him.

“Who are you?!” she asked, in a meek little voice that made Craig want to smash Kenny’s head against the pavement. Was he _serious_? Was he really besmirching this pretty, youthful girl who was easily no older than fifteen? Oh Craig was going to kill him.

“… I’m looking for Kenny.” He said, after a moment to process his shock. The girl shrunk back and nodded silently, stepping back and bowing her head down as he made his way inside.

“He’s down the hall. First door.”

Inside the house was hardly any better than outside. It smelled kind of like mould and stale alcohol, probably because that was what Craig felt sticking the carpet to his sneakers as he strode through the house toward the door he had been directed to.

“Kenny!” he demanded furiously, bringing up a fist to hammer on the door. “Open up you fucker!”

The door swung open before his fist connected with the wood a second time, and on the other side Kenny stood in a white t-shirt and a pair of boxers. He looked like he had been awake for some time, but had only just now gotten out of bed.

“Kenny is dead.” He said flatly, and Craig glared as hard as he could. Was he _serious_? Was this petite guy, with freckles and blonde hair and a nose that was kind of crooked but still very cute where it turned up at the tip, actually fucking a child, or was Craig just over reacting because his whole experience with this person had left him over sensitive?

“Kenny _will_ be dead in like three seconds if he doesn’t tell me who that girl is and why she is here?”

He was careful to keep his voice hot, but quiet, so that whoever she is couldn’t hear him. Kenny’s eyebrows reached for the stratosphere, and he transfered all of his weight onto his left leg as Craig sweats, waiting to hear him say they were banging so he could punch him.

“… Why?” he asked, instead of answering. “She’s off limits, if that’s what you were wanting to know.”

“ _Are you fucking her_?”

A look of absolute revulsion passed over Kenny’s face.

“Dude! She’s my sister!”

… Sister?

Craig hadn’t known Kenny had a sister.

He let his shock linger for a moment, sinking in and remaining obvious on his face as Kenny realised what Craig had thought and snorting derisively.

“Fucking hell Craig. Are you _jealous_? Get in here. Jesus Christ you’re fucking _hopeless_.”

He ushered Craig into his shoebox bedroom and shut the door.

“Even if she wasn’t my sister, she’s way too young for me. You know I like older chicks.” He sat down on the edge of the mattress stack he used as a bed and sighed. “But that’s irrelevant. What do you want? I’m kind of busy right now.”

He gestured to the crappy old Dell laptop sitting closed on his bed, and through his shock and confusion Craig understood that that meant he had been watching porn. As if he didn’t have enough naked women pinned up all over his bedroom walls. Craig was still trying to file away the fact that Kenny had a sister. An _actual_ sister? Like Ruby was to him except unlike Craig, Kenny obviously didn’t feel the need to bitch about her all the time to his friends.

“You never told me you had a sister.” He said, and as irrational as it was (because after all, he had never _asked_ ,) Craig felt personally offended that Kenny had never informed him of this fact. Craig. Himself. The guy who had fantasized about sucking Kenny’s dick in the boys toilets at school. Not that anyone knew about this.

Kenny shrugged and flushed as though Craig was entering sensitive territory. Weird, in all the years they had known each other, Craig had never found any sensitive territory about Kenny’s person but now apparently he had.

“Why should I? Like I’d want any of you fucking perverts trying to put moves on her. Besides, I never _hid_ the fact I had a sister. I walk her to school most mornings you know.”

Really?

Craig had never noticed.

He spluttered anyway, and gestured at the inside of the door he had just passed through as though she was standing right there.

“You have no idea what I thought when she answered the door!” He said finally. Kenny narrowed his eyes and folded his legs under him on the bed.

“I have a pretty good idea. But you know, I doubt you actually came here to grill me about Karen. What do you want? I haven’t been ignoring your texts if that’s what you were wondering about. I ran out of credit.” He pointed to his cell phone on the bedside table (an upturned beer crate) and Craig felt a ripple of annoyance move down his back. He had sent Kenny a decent number of texts over the last twenty four hours, asking if they were just going to leave their friendship like that or if he was going to try and get Craig to consider pushing onward into fucking territory. Craig was a realest in that respect – he knew Kenny might have expectations of him.

“… What do you _think_ I want?” 

Kenny shook his head in slow bemusement and patted the space next to him on the bed.

“I don’t know Craig. It’s been almost a week and I thought you were never going to talk to me again.”

And even though Craig had hesitations about sitting down there, his legs were tired and so was his heart. He gave in, and sat down next to Kenny on his bed.

“I thought you were never going to talk to _me_ again.”

“Then I guess we are both dumb shits then.” He looked at Craig and it was hard not to stare at his lips because Craig could still remember what they felt like. What they tasted like on his own. “I sent you a message on facebook earlier.”

“I haven’t logged on for a week.”

“Well that was pointless then.” He sighed and raked a hand through his hair uncomfortably. “It was mostly just me kind of saying that I like you a whole lot as a friend, but I only really kissed you because it was a heat of the moment thing. You know that right?”

“… Oh. Yeah. Of course I do.” Craig felt his stomach sink. He stared at his feet and at the carpet beneath them, looking at the texture and examining each thread like it contained the answers to all the questions he wanted to ask. What did heat of the moment even _mean_ to Kenny? “I just… I dunno. I guess I wanted to check if we were still cool.”

“Of course were cool! You’re really great Craig, and I’m bummed for you things didn’t work out with Bebe. But I guess they never would have anyway if you weren’t into it.” he shrugged and reached back, almost touching Craig’s thigh, to move his laptop still sitting on the mattress onto the floor and out of danger of falling. “But hey, while we _are_ talking about this, do you mind if I ask you something?”

Craig shook his head numbly, thinking that there wasn’t much to say that wasn’t going to bring hopeless tears and frustrations that were unjustified by anyone’s standards.

“Are you gay? Like actually? I’m kind of interested now, I guess I always kind of figured you were asexual?”

Craig was amazed that he wasn’t even surprised by this question, as well as how easy it was to answer.

“Yeah. I don’t know. I thought I was kind of bi or something? Now I’m not sure if I can ever look at a guy like that again.”

“God, I wasn’t _that_ shit at kissing you was I?”

Kenny was joking, but Craig didn’t know how to tell him he was very near to the truth without sounding mean. It wasn’t that Kenny was bad at kissing, because everyone knew he was brilliant at it. It was more that kissing him had been the most disappointing experience of Craig’s short life. He hoped he never had to feel heartbreak that deep again.

“You were fine. I just got spooked I guess.”

“You seemed pretty into it.”

“I wasn’t _not_ into it.”

Just like he wasn’t _not_ into the way Kenny laughed, or the way Kenny smiled, or the way Kenny carried himself all cocky and edgy and tough.

“Well okay. I was pretty into it too then, I suppose. I wasn’t going to tell you but if you don’t mind me saying, I would totally let you fuck me.” He smiled, and he had such an impish grin it still made Craig’s chest clench with longing. Goddamnit, he was so _confused_ right now. Maybe Kenny was still what he wanted? This train of thought was shut down pretty quickly though, by another.

“Or at least, I would let you fuck me if you weren’t totally in love with someone else.”

“I what?”

Craig must have looked pretty confused by this, because Kenny sniggered.

“You. You’ve been looking like you’ve had cupid’s arrow right between your eyes for the last month. I thought it was Bebe but I guess not right?” he nudged Craig’s elbow encouragingly and Craig felt his meagre breakfast turn to bubbling stew in his intestines.

“Uh, no?”

“Uh, yes. I didn’t notice until Butters pointed it out to me though.”

“What the fuck does Butters know?!”

“Quite a lot actually. He’s not as stupid as everyone reckons he is.”

Craig thought he heard something halfway fond in his tone. He tried very hard to ignore it because it made the slop in his digestion boil.

“Butters and me haven’t had a proper conversation for years. He knows _shit_ about my life.”

“So? I’ve lived enough to know that sometimes, you have to stand back and look at the bigger picture before you can see anything at all. You have to have… I dunno. An outsiders perspective? And there’s no-one I know who’s more of an outsider than Butters….” He let himself fall backwards on his bed and sighed deeply. Calmly. How could he be relaxed when Craig felt like his innards were being minced up and wadded into balls for replacement in the wrong cavities of his body?

“Except maybe Tweek, that is.”

And Craig couldn’t tell if that was an objective observation or an unkind side remark about his radiant, dearest friend. Either way, he found it to be unpleasantly stinging. 


	16. A pin up calendar with pictures of arcade game champion Billy Mitchell pasted over the heads of all the models.

“Are you heading out now?”

Craig was vaguely surprised when Tweek pulled his apron off at six am and passed it to his father, who had come by earlier than Craig was accustomed to and put the day special sign out before the sun had even started to inch above the horizon. Tweek nodded and held out his hand to take Craig’s apron too, and Mister Tweak gave him a calm little smile, speaking on behalf of his son.

“He’s still sick, he has to go home and have some rest.”

Craig thought privately, watching the way Tweek pressed his lips together in annoyance at being spoken for, they really should have given him time off when he was puking. He said nothing though, pulling his hat back on and watching as Tweek extracted a large black cardigan from under the counter.

“Walk together then?” he asked, and Tweek nodded. Craig felt the cool ebb and swirl of indifference as he watched Tweek’s father brew him a coffee and pass it to him in a tall paper cup without offering Craig one, and they made their way out the door. His mood that morning was just as dull and uninspired as the foggy dawn outside, and it had been two day since he had talked with Kenny but he still didn’t feel any better. The pain of disappointment and confusion had faded into a bruising ache of loss now, and he had no way of knowing how long this grief might last but he did know that this lopsided longing wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the books and movies might suggest. Being heartbroken wasn’t soft focus or blur filters or candles in a misty forest at all - it was more like walking down a muddy road in socks in a muggy drizzle and just kind of accepting it because when he finally found his way back to shelter and warmth he knew he would only end up back out here again alone, wandering the crooked sodden paths of meaninglessness and trying to figure out how it was possible, to _not_ like Kenny any more and simultaneously long for him. To be attached but not attached, to be repulsed by his treatment and attitude but to still find him beautiful and comforting as an image burned on the inside of his eyelids. Every time he blinked, and he caught a glimpse of momentary darkness, Craig remembered those words. That suggestion that they _might_ have fucked, if circumstances had been different, but circumstances weren’t different and it was entirely possible that Kenny was just saying that because Craig wasn’t good enough for him. Craig was a guy, for one thing, and an incredibly plain looking guy at that. He wasn’t fun to be around, and he tended toward an obtuse sarcasm that made other people uncomfortable. No wonder he had shot him down and hurt his pride and no wonder Craig was so bent out of shape about it because really, the whole incident just reminded him of failings he already knew existed and didn’t want to be reminded of. Ever.

He realised they had already walked two blocks when Tweek coughed discretely to get his attention, and passed him the cup of coffee in his hands.

“Can you hold this while I get a cigarette?” he asked, and numbly Craig nodded, letting his feet carry him unthinkingly and his eyes wander across the skyline as it started to fill with shades of purple, and blue, and dissolve into white along the snow-capped mountains beyond the fog. “You can even have it if you want, I had one earlier.”

“S’okay.” Craig said, glancing at the cup and the silver spirals of steam dancing off the surface, before looking to Tweek and watching him extract the zigzag band he wore to keep his hair off his face at work. Craig hadn’t seen the beanie again since Tweek first showed him his new colour, and this was nice because the more Craig saw it the more convinced he became that this was the way it was meant to be. As if sensing his detached staring, Tweek gave him a little smile as he tucked the hair band into his satchel and procured from his pocket a packet of tailies and a lighter.

“Sure you don’t want one?” he asked, and Craig shook his head.

“I’m fine.” He said, taking a sip from the coffee even though he didn’t want it and letting the bitterness wash over his tongue as Tweek lit up.

As the sun began to bleed over the horizon and illuminate the streets, Craig managed to comment that the purplish light of the early morning had always been something he missed out on until he started this job. The quiet made his skin prickle and the cold his chest expand - Tweek nodded in silent agreement as he drew on his cigarette and tucked his box and lighter back into his jeans. It was too early in the morning for birds, and as they made their way silently down the road the streetlamps began to shut off one by one. The freshness of the air made Craig’s face and hands tingle, and Tweek shone like he was made of snow or stardust, and his hair resembled like strands of quartz formed in the nucleus of a supernova. His eyes had a muted glow that Craig could only describe as terrible and beautiful, and they kept distracting him from his doleful ponderings. Kept making his jaw feel tighter and his tongue feel thicker and in his emptiness he struggled to find anything he could he say to this alien child, this self-professed cosmic immigrant who seemed to waiver in and out of this plane like he was made of Craig’s own aching daydreams. Maybe Craig was over tired. He tightened his grip on the coffee cup with one hand and buried his other deeper into the pocket of his jeans.

“Are you really still sick?” Craig asked him, and Tweek shrugged. Their shoulders touched as they walked, and Craig found himself leaning against Tweek’s arm as they made their way down the road.

“we talked about this the other day.”

“You never gave much of an explanation.”

“I was still kind of in the middle of adjusting. I’m still sick, I’m always sick.”

Craig wanted to ask him what it was, exactly, that had fucked him up so badly this time, but found that they were drawing close to his house.

“You want to come in?” he offered vaguely, and Tweek shook his head. When he pursed his lips around the cigarette, Craig realised that there was something he just really _liked_ about Tweek’s fingers being that close to his mouth. They looked good there, skinny and nibbled and purplish at the ends.

“No. It’s okay. I need to go home and take my pills. Are you okay?” he added it as an afterthought, wisps of smoke escaping between his lips as he spoke. “You were so quiet tonight. Sorry if I’m being nosy. I’m not being nosy, right?”

“No. its fine. Its just… I dunno.”

Craig didn’t know how to say it was everything, but that it was also nothing at the same time. That it was guy stuff, and heart stuff, and hormonal and emotional too. The last time he had tried to talk to someone about his feelings, he had ended up lying on an ancient mattress in a unfurnished room, gazing at the vagina on the woman on the poster on Kenny’s bedroom wall. He had stayed there for about fifteen minutes after Kenny had clarified their situation. Fifteen minutes of dumb shock like the shock that follows blood loss or a sharp punch to the face. The accusations that he fancied someone else still hurt, but not as much as those moments Kenny touched his face and told him that he needed to stop living in his head. He needed to stop being so cold, and maybe then he would see what was right in front of his eyes.

For a moment, Craig had thought Kenny would kiss him, but he didn’t, and like the ashes of a dying star Craig felt himself fading away. He couldn’t care any more. He didn’t want to try.

He accepted the hollow sensation in his bones and made his way back home. He stood here, in the same place he was standing now, and considered walking further until he dropped off the end of the world. But like he would right now, he ended up crawling back into bed.

“You dunno?” Tweek glanced at the coffee in his hand, like he wanted to ask if Craig was planning to give it back. Craig wasn’t. Tweek brought his index finger up to his lips and began biting at the skin next to his nail.

“Yeah. Its just… guy stuff I guess?”

Tweek’s eyes fluttered like he was a little confused by that phrasing, and Craig realised a little after the fact that he was on the verge of saying that impossible thing again. For the second time in his whole life he was close to admitting he liked boys out loud.

Or at least he had done. He thought he did. He wasn’t sure.

“Like… the ‘girl stuff’ kind of guy stuff or actual guy stuff.”

“… The first one.”

Tweek inhaled through his nose and dropped his hand. The cigarette he was clutching in the other hung limply by his side like he had forgotten about it.

“Oh.”

Craig thought he seemed a little bewildered by this. By the bare naked simplicity of it all. “You’re having romantic issues… with a guy?”

“Yeah.” Craig told him. “Kenny.”

Tweek stared at him a little longer, but didn’t say anything. Finally, he seemed to remember that he had a smoke in his fingers, and as he lifted it up with a trembling hand he averted his eyes.

“Oh. Well. Okay. I hope that works out for you.”

Craig watched him turn around and walk away, and he didn’t want to tell him that it was already too late.

 

…

 

It was 11pm when they met in front of the elementary school and shared around the box of cigarettes Kenny had brought with him. Craig passed, because even though he was getting used to being around a person smoking he still wasn’t sure he wanted to risk trying it himself. Token called him a pussy and Clyde looked at him as though his declining was suspicious, but no one brought it up and the group of them, five in total (Kenny had brought butters with him, much to Craig’s personal offence) spent some time loitering around the front of the school talking about their plans for the concluding summer break. Now that 4th of July and Token’s party was over, everyone seemed to be at a loss and without even meaning to, talk about their classes and who each person planned to hook up with that year began to punctuate the conversation. Craig was very aware of the way that Clyde and Token kept looking at him, and he wondered for the first time (why hadn’t it occurred to him sooner?) if Bebe had told them about what had happened. Probably not, because they hadn’t asked him about it.

At least she was a discrete and considerate person. Unlike Wendy, who had quite furiously told the entire school about the time Stan moaned Kyle’s name during sex.  

He tried to ignore the way that Kenny being there was making his knees feel spongy and his palms wet, and pushed the chatter forcibly into the background. He occupied himself by looking up at the stars overhead and thinking about how they kind of reminded him of that evening he and Tweek had spent at the playground instead. They were bright and uncountable, twinkling and glittering like a million eyes looking on. What was it Tweek had said that night? He felt safe when the stars were watching him. Craig supposed he could see that. It was comforting to know that there was more out there than this. There was a world and a billion billion stars and thousands of strangers to meet and see, even though here there was nothing but the smell of cigarettes and token sniggering as though Clyde had just said something extremely funny. Which Craig doubted.

God, why was he even _here_ again?

He had thought that maybe catching up with Clyde and Token would be a good distraction. A reminder of the things he didn’t used to hate just so that he could remember what it was like to feel something other than a vague discomfort with the fact he was alive. He had been under the impression it would just be the tree of them, but Kenny’s presence had thrown him off and the other boy didn’t even know it. Fuck him. Fuck him and his happiness and Craig wanted to punch him and flip him off but also he wanted to kiss him again just to prove to himself that they _weren’t_ meant to be together. That it wasn’t right, and even though he _knew_ Kenny wasn’t the guy of his dreams he was desperate for a retry. A re-count. Another attempt just in case the first time had been wrong.

(Unlikely)

His efforts to distract himself found his attention being drawn back to Tweek, more specifically the way he had looked that morning (how glowing) and how he had just _said_ things to his friend then that maybe he wouldn’t have, if he was a little less weary and broken. It was so easy to just admit it to him, a matter of simple words he might have struggled to conjure otherwise, and remembering how badly he hadn’t wanted to spill his feelings to Tweek less than a week previously it made Craig acutely aware of he fact that this whole horrid confusion of events had changed something in him. It had broken something stubborn and made the unyielding give way in his heart. Did that man they were friends now? Best friends? Real, certifiable bros?

He tried to keep pondering this, because it certainly seemed easier to puzzle, and he nodded when people asked him things and answered on auto-pilot to the appropriate queries, but his thoughts were very much being directed toward wondering if him and Tweek would be able to keep hanging out the way they have been during the school term, or if the moment the bells rang Tweek would go back to being the jumpy, neurotic boy he always had been. This fear made him feel kind of sad, and he didn’t much like to wonder about it but he seemed to have a morbid fascination with knowing. Maybe he should ask? Maybe he wouldn’t know fir sure until the first day back, and he was standing in the hall while Tweek was at his locker wearing a black cardigan that looked like a net curtain and a pair of mis-matched sneakers. Would _Craig_ be able to go up to him, and say hi?

He wasn’t all that sure he could. But then he remembered the little way he laughed and the expression he wore when he was confused by something and kind of disgusted. Like he didn’t know what the fuck something was and why it was _his_ problem to deal with it.

Craig thought that there was no way he _couldn’t_. He had slipped into living this summer as though he didn’t have to go back to school someday. He hadn’t even realised until now, and it was so close to biting him in the ass that he could _taste_ it.

He sat next to the others on the steps behind the cafeteria and chewed the inside of his cheek, ignoring everything around him until Kenny nudged his elbow gently and asked

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” He lied quickly, accepting the jab of pain in his chest when Kenny touched him as just a part of this new and painful world he had uncovered in his own head. “I’m fine.”

Kenny gave him a little smile and a thumbs up.

“You look like you’re trying to figure out the meaning of life.”

“Maybe I am. What do you know about the meaning of life?”

“More than you, trust me.” He wiggled his eyebrows and Craig felt a pinch that wasn’t quite fair. He was jus so _beautiful_.

“Fuck off Kenny.”

Kenny scoffed, and Craig decided that even though he had consciously made the decision to try and reconnect with his friends, wanted to go home.

He had done his best, and failed, and now he wanted to go back to lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling helplessly.

He stood up and the others fell silent.

“I’m leaving.” He announced, and Clyde and Token gave him a look of such annoyance that he almost felt bad for making them come via his house and pick him up on their walk over here.

“Are you kidding?” Token asked him dryly. Butters cocked his head and frowned.

“What for?”

“I’m bored. You guys can sit here and get lung disease all you like but I’m leaving.”

Kenny made a surprised noise stood up too.

“Hang on. These guys haven’t seen you for like a week and you want to leave already?”

“… That’s what I just said.”

Since when had Kenny been so interested in making sure everybody got to see Craig on a semi-regular basis, anyway?

He gave Craig a suspicious look and passed Token the box of cigarettes in his hand.

“Okay,” he said, picking his coat up off the ground and pulling it on. “Fine. Then let me and Butters come with you. We are walking that way anyway.”

Craig opened his mouth to tell him he go fuck himself, but Butters interrupted before he could start making the sound.

“Uh, Kenny? I’m not ready to go home just yet.”

Kenny looked as though he had just been slapped.

“You what?”

Oh god. Craig didn’t want to get involved with this.

He sighed heavily and turned on his heal, ignoring Clyde’s calls of ‘hey! You can’t just walk off like that!” and trudging off school property onto the street. The streetlamps faded the stars out a little from here, but the open spaces meant that it was even brighter, and he felt a bit dazed as he walked down the road, unconsciously heading in the direction of Tweek’s house. Maybe he would go there and see if he was up. Or maybe he was at the shop tonight? What day was it anyway?

He was half way through figuring it out before footfalls on the pavement behind him made him halt, and when he heard Kenny calling for him to wait the fuck up he froze in place, a quiver of confusion disrupting the speed at which he was making progress.

“What?” he asked, expecting to see Butters trailing behind Kenny when he turned around. He was surprised to find that Kenny had come alone, struggling to jog to catch after him and eventually coming to a stop when they were standing about a metre apart.  He felt his stomach fall and his legs go all soft. Kenny gave him a little scowl and shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

“Butters wants to stay behind.” He said simply. Craig thought he heard a little pang of resentment in his voice.

“Why did you bring him?” he snapped.

Kenny shrugged, and fell into place beside Craig, matching his steps when he resumed walking despite having legs that were significantly shorter.

They walked in frigid silence, and Craig found his thoughts of Tweek being interrupted again by the snowfall that he associated with Kenny McCormick. The unfair disruption of his usual thinking processes. The weird surreal way he felt knowing Kenny was nearby, and it was only amplified by the fact that they were alone. In the dark. And Craig would have probably given anything for this opportunity a month ago because Kenny wasn’t talking about girls or fucking or any of that shit, he was just silent. Just Kenny. And Craig adored it almost as much as he despised him.

“… You and Butters have hung out a lot this summer.” He said after a while. Kenny nodded and his sneakers scuffed the pavement as they made their way past the police station car park. The building itself was dark and shadowy, and the windows were gaping black portals Craig tried not to look into as they approached. He saw his reflection out of the corner of his eye, and Kenny’s much smaller reflection beside him. He didn’t need to look at them to know that they were almost touching arms as they walked.

“Butters is great. I never understood why people don’t like him.”

“He’s a little ‘too much’.”

“You’re not enough Craig. Leave Butters alone.”

Craig held up his hands, kind of pissed that Kenny had gotten so curt so fast.

“Geeze. Sorry.”

He was glad it was dark, because otherwise Kenny would have been able to see him flush.

They made it past the station, and then down the main street, and it was a good twenty minutes walk from here to where Kenny lived across the tracks but Craig’s place was only ten minutes down the road. Despite it being a little chilly, and despite how urgently he had wanted to leave the gathering before, now he was alone with this boy he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to his empty bedroom and beat himself up because he will ever get over this infuriating crush he seemed to have on an asshole who looked through him like he was some kind of a window. The same asshole he was cutting across the town park basketball court with. The same asshole who stopped him when they get to the chicken wire fence on the far side and sighed.

“Craig?”

“What?” Craig felt a small jolt when Kenny touched his shoulder, but he forced himself not to respond obviously in case it was noticed.

“I get the feeling like there’s something you aren’t telling me.”

That of course made Craig instantly defensive.

“What? Why would you even think that? Fuck you.”

Kenny ground his teeth together, and rubbed the heel of his hands against his eyes.

“God, I’m sorry. I’ve really fucked up, haven’t I?” he inhaled and gave Craig a look so tired it made Craig feel like he was a particularly trying three year old. “I never even _asked_ if you liked me. That’s the problem, right? You like me?”

Craig considered kicking him in the balls and running. How _dare_ he assume that kind of thing?! Even worse, how dare he be right? He sneered and turned his face away, to the sky, so Kenny couldn’t see his eyes.

“How’d you work that out?”

“Well, I thought about it. After you left I thought about it, and I realised that you always kind of gave off that vibe of being attached to me. I just never noticed because I was too distracted by… other stuff.”

The way he said ‘other stuff’ was the same way he said ‘Butters’. Craig almost gagged in disgust.

“Full of yourself much?”

“No, I’m not, and you know I’m not. And I want to talk to you about it because it’s not fair for me to act like I am so great at knowing about liking people and fucking and all that kind of shit because I’m _not_. I don’t have a clue. I’m just as hopeless as you except I can pretend because I don’t have any moral issues with fucking the first available beauty who comes to distract me. Does that make sense?”

Craig thinks he’s rambling, and he wonders obscurely if _Butters_ had put him up to this. If Butters had noticed issues in Kenny’s recount, and told Kenny what they meant, and yes Kenny was a perceptive person but he wasn’t _that_ perceptive – he had practically admitted that Butters was good at reading from an outside perspective and Craig realised that obviously, they talk about him when he’s not around. They discuss him, together, and it made his skin crawl. He felt himself hate Butters that little bit more.

“No. But it doesn’t matter Ken. I’m done with you. You’re a fucking asshole.”

“Yeah, maybe I am, but I’m also your friend. And I _like_ you Craig. I really do. If I didn’t think it would ruin everything then I would totally fuck around with you, you know that right?”

Did Kenny think he was helping, saying this shit? Craig balled his fists so tight one of his knuckles cracked and he had to count to ten. God he was so humiliated. And so disappointed. And this whole interaction just felt like having tablespoons of salt poured into his wounds.

“Kenny. I. Don’t. Like. You. I thought I did! I really did. But then when it happened I hated it and I hated you and I hated myself for even trying. I don’t think I _ever_ liked you. I just wanted to like you because you were good to me and you’re kind of attractive, but now I’m so mad because even though I _know_ I don’t want to date you or fuck you I cant help but be hurt that you could just brush me off like I’m just another one of those girls.”

He stared at Craig uncomprehending, and his expression made him look like he was trying to solve a difficult puzzle one fragmentary piece at a time.

“ _Just_ another one of those girls.” He repeated, unsure which part of that sentence to invalidate first. “I don’t know what kind of a person you take me for, but those people were never _just_ anything to me. Those ‘girls’ had names, and they had faces, and they had things they liked and didn’t like and maybe they even had guys they loved who wouldn’t love them back so hang me for thinking I deserved a little companionship and conversation at four am when I thought so much about how I was utterly alone.”

“ _I_ could have given you companionship!”

It was a petty and immature comment to make, and Craig regretted it as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Kenny looked at him like he was mad.

“You never offered.” He stated simply. “You never offered. But you _wouldn’t_ have offered. I know you wouldn’t have.”

Craig hated that he was right. He wouldn’t have, because he wouldn’t have wanted to see that Kenny was lonely and complex and human and he found comfort in the arms of people just as lonely and complex and human as he was, if only for the littlest of whiles.

Craig had never been lonely or complex or human before. He had never know the pinch of loss like a needle in the chambers of his heart or the euphoric flutter of happiness in his stomach like in those moments Tweek’s fingers bushed against his. He had never known sympathy for a girl with dark blonde re-growth at the roots of bright gold curls, or the skin tingling lightness of a five am sunrise, but now he _did_ – this summer he got older, but he also got wiser, so now he felt tender and everything seemed so vivid but also it seemed so distant like he still couldn’t believe he was alive.

For the first time in his life, he was alive.

He blinked, and Kenny looked just the same but somehow like he had changed. Like the dimensions of his form had shifted and now Craig was looking at something with properties completely new. His eyes were blue, like the clearest of clear skies, and Craig knew it even though the darkness of the evening made it impossible to see. His nose had faint freckles, still ghosted in subtle streetlamp glow, and his front teeth ha a tiny gap – this was the first time Craig had noticed this, and it excited him.

“… Can I offer now?”

He asked, and Kenny’s expression softened.

“Is that what you want?”

Craig wasn’t sure. There was only one way to find out.

He closed the ten inch gap between them like it was never there to start with, and obviously startled Kenny backed against the chicken wire fence but he didn’t push him off when he joined their mouths together again. His body felt different now, and his lips tasted foreign, but there was something recognisable about them as well - the places they were touching sent those same, warbling tingles all over the surface of Craig’s skin as they had previously, but now he felt less like he was startled by the physicality of the experience. Kenny’s body was warm, his tongue slid against the inside of Craig’s teeth and made his loins ache, but all of this was secondary to the longing that seemed to bore deeper into his chest, the sweetest beautiful ache of his heart like embers and the unending scent of hot earth, and suddenly he was lying on warm stone and burning sand and he was gazing at the sky like he was love stuck and starving for freedom from earthly reality. Like the only peace in all the universe could be found in the white glow of galactic arms embracing him, and the comforting memory of cosmic dystrophy settling in his bones.

This _was_ wrong.

It felt good, but it was wrong.

Kenny was too short, for one thing. His hands were not tentative, and Craig had to hold them back because he found them distracting as they carded through his hair. He let his thigh slip between Kenny’s legs to pin him where he was because he wanted to press further, to see if things would get better of if it would all stay the same. There wasn’t enough of him though, this petite boy who tasted a little like the lingering bite of alcohol, and his hair was too unkempt. His lips were too small. When Craig pulled back to catch a breath Kenny blurred into shadowy focus and Craig had to try and remember.

He had blue eyes, didn’t he? Maybe he would look better if his eyes were green.

“Alright?” Kenny breathed, and Craig nodded. He closed his eyes and leant in to reconnect. The ease with which Craig found their hips grinding together made his back break in a cold sweat, and it felt pleasurable to have that contact but at the same time he kind of wondered if he should keep this up. Was it okay to keep going, or would dong so be betraying himself? His confidence faltered, but his hands didn’t. He gripped Kenny’s waist and ran his fingers along the band of his jeans.

“You smell good.” He murmured, clinging to the only good detail of this closeness and dragging his mouth against the curve of Kenny’s neck in fascination. What _was_ that smell anyway, and why was it so fucking good? It didn’t match the rest of him, and although it was distant it was mouth watering. The more he thought about it, and the more he tried to breathe it in, the more it escaped him, but then Kenny laughed shakily and told him he was trying a new shampoo. Craig suddenly knew the one, because he had seen the exact bottle in Tweek’s shower that night he had slept over. He smelt it on Tweek’s hair every time he gravitated a little too close.

God. _God_. How had that scent never driven him crazy before? How had he managed to walk around for so long oblivious. Right now it was making him short on breath and frantic, and his brain felt blank in the places where he was trying to remember Kenny because now he was thinking about Tweek and the other things about him Craig had never really noticed. The beautiful things that Craig loved. The way that he could tell when Craig’s phone was about to ring. The way that he chewed his nails and had to wear band aids to stop himself from bleeding. When his hands slid under Kenny’s shirt and found goose pimples rising on his ribs, Craig thought of watching movies with his workmate, and the strange and fleeting fantasy of lacing their fingers together and not saying anything.

It was the kind of thing that happened in mythology. Where two cosmic bodies danced around each other until they collided and shattered into stardust. That was the euphoria Craig felt when Kenny bit gently into his bottom lip and groaned quietly.  

“Who are you thinking about?” he breathed softly. “When you kiss me?”

Craig didn’t want to break the spell to answer honestly right now.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and tried to block out everything but that smell.


	17. Pulling out your fillings with needle nose pliers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SOON.

Craig couldn’t sleep.

He pulled his laptop out from under his bed and tried booting it up instead, and even though he had lost interest in finishing that stupid campaign on Heroes of Might and Magic III, he figured he may as well _try_ and get past the zounds of goddamned griffins that had been fucking with his shit for a good three weeks before he had become distracted, and set his game down with no set goal to finish again.

Even if he counted to five hundred between the times he checked his watch or his phone screen, it seemed like only thirty seconds had passed him by. His ability to sit still had evaporated on the air, and the restlessness of someone who had something to do and somewhere to go but no real idea how to do it or where was driving him absolutely crazy. First it was one am. Then it was two. He wondered as he stared at the windows logo glowing on his screen if he would still be awake at three or four. Working late nights at the shop had really fucked him up, but not as badly as knowing that _right now_ he could walk to Tweek Bros. and find out if Tweek was there working, reading _House of Leaves_ alone with a coffee and his music drifting eerily out of the sound system behind the counter.

There was nothing stopping him.

Except, he wasn’t sure he could, because now whenever he thought of Tweek a strange feeling twisted in his stomach and he wanted to shy away from it in the same way he just couldn’t lay there in bed completely still. It was primal - nervous and scared and overly sensitive. Thinking about it directly reminded him of looking at the sun, because no matter how badly he _wanted_ to his body and his mind wouldn’t let him.

He found himself closing his eyes tighter the harder he stared, and he found himself brushing the wiggling, fluttering feeling in his stomach away the closer he edged to acknowledging it. Besides, on some deep, subconscious level he sort of already knew what he was thinking.

Craig inhaled slowly, forcing himself to concentrate on the smell of his soap (he had showered tonight, most thoroughly) and the coldness of the night-time in his room. His bedside lamp couldn’t cast a glow warm enough to lift the chill of autumn, and so he sat in bed wearing a black hoodie and knitted socks. Beneath his clean sheets (he changed his sheets as well – what an effort) his legs were bare and tingling. It was almost like they were itching to run somewhere, but Craig couldn’t even begin to wonder where.

His computer screen lit blue and the logon prompt appeared just as he was wiggling around and trying to prop himself up against his pillows again. He bashed in his password (Spaceman98) and before his desktop icons had even loaded he was clicking all over the place. Open browser. Open Skype. Open outlook and Heroes and he may as well check his Sims here while he was at it. Of course, the whole thing froze up and frustrated, Craig slammed his laptop closed. He groaned and lay the battered device on the bedside table, almost knocking a half glass of water and two empty blister packets of Accutane onto the floor.

Craig rubbed his fingers on his cheek listlessly, feeling the faded scarring there and realising that he hadn’t had a pimple in three weeks. This should have made him happy, but it felt like an empty victory because clear skin and straight teeth were things he wanted _last_ summer. This summer, he couldn’t have cared less or at least, he couldn’t have cared less this second, as he slid down his bed and tried to make himself comfortable on his stomach. On his side. Again on his back.

He sighed and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

God. _God_.

Why was everything so stupidly dissatisfying? Life would be so much easier if this summer had never happened. If he could just gone back to living a life of happy (if deluded) ignorance. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, Craig. If you tell yourself you are the centre of this universe then maybe someday you really _will_ be.

Craig sighed and let his hands fall back down to his side, and still uncomfortably twitchy he curled his toes in his sheets in an effort to reduce his leg jiggling. What was _wrong_ with him? He couldn’t t relax and when he tried to figure out why he couldn’t think straight. Again, he tried to approach that glimmer of a thought or feeling in his core, but again when he tried he felt himself shiver and shy away. Why? Why, why, why?

He groaned and turned off his lamp in annoyance. Now the only light coming in to his bedroom was from outside and he felt his breath catching when he realised that he could see the sky through the top of his frosted window. Three bright points of light, stars blinking at him from heavenly cradles, were there to keep him company. He exhaled a long breath and told himself that maybe it wasn’t such a pressing issue. Maybe it wasn’t something that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Or when he was ready. Tweek would still be there, right? The same boy with his silver hair and green eyes and bruises on the protruding bits of his wrists would still be there in the morning, and Craig felt a little breath of relief flow into his chest. He hadn’t text Craig today, but Craig hadn’t text him and besides, Tweek was easily distracted. Maybe he was out performing some other bizarre ritual to turn him back into the interstellar changeling he probably was. Piercings. Self-administered biro tattoos of the constellations. Or maybe chain smoking on the door step of Tweek Bros. and wishing he had the nerve to do that kind of thing.

Craig closed his eyes and sighed, and he felt a cool sense of fondness calm his jittery limbs.

Maybe, just maybe, Tweek was asleep.

Craig remembered vaguely that Kenny had said he would go back and find Butters – maybe they were walking home now together across the train tracks, and maybe Kenny would be stupid or brave enough to grab for Butters’ hand as they went but Craig doubted that about as much as he doubted Tweek would willingly etch pen ink ghosts into the uppermost layer of his skin. Clyde would be snoring, dreaming of Bebe, and Token would probably be online in chat rooms messaging girls from Denver. One time he even met a woman online from San Francisco, but he said they were only ever friends. In some distant room, Craig thought Kyle Broflovski was probably still awake and maybe reading, because sleep had evaded him too and Craig wondered if that meant they had something in common now – the ache of lovesickness, but not of love lost, because the object of their affections was still there and always _would_ be there, just beyond the radius of their fingertips.

Craig hoped, even though he felt no particular care for Kyle, that he got some sleep tonight.

He blinked his eyes back open and found the darkness in the corners of his ceiling was fuzzier and bluer than the darkness on the inside of his eyelids. When he was younger, Craig used to imagine sinister creatures in those velvety nooks, lingering and waiting to pounce on his hunched form, and his fear of darkness meant that when he was younger he never appreciated the open streets at night, or the peace that could be found in the limitless void of the sky. His dreams of walking among the stars was founded on the misconception that space would be so burning with the light of a million astronomical bodies he would be blinded, a dream cast aside when at fourteen he realised that space was so much _nothing_ , and Craig couldn’t handle ‘nothing’ then like he could handle ‘nothing’ now.

Now he has known nothing. He has touched its boundaries and felt it sucking at the deepest parts of his soul. There was something so life changing about having the illusion of meaning removed, so everything about him was in suspension. There was something transformative, about opening ones eyes and seeing that reality is _made_ of nothing – the spaces between atoms and the invisible connections between people and places and things and Craig exhaled, because now he was thinking he was relaxing, and he made sense of each fragment of thought as it drifted through his consciousness and settled on the clear black stillness that was his mind.

And he waited, in the darkness and the silence, for something.

For the spontaneous moment of brightness, of a billion million stars and a billion million planets, and of air and of sense and of beauty, oh _beauty_ , that made him feel like he was already walking ankle deep in nebulas and swimming through the oceans of stardust in space. Sweat beaded at his nape, and in his chest a new feeling of movement made him roll onto his side and curl there, and he whined in frustration because he wanted to laugh and he couldn’t. He wanted to moan and twist in euphoria but there was no freedom to do so in the quiet of his house at night so instead he bit into his knuckle and let himself tremble with longing and heat and _lust_ like he had never known before.

He pressed his hands into his crotch in an effort to resist but found no relief there. The burning feeling of want made him sure he had _never_ felt attraction like this before. It was monolithic. Gigantic. Beyond his comprehension and far exceeding the boundaries of South Park, Colorado. Maybe even beyond the boundaries of the state. The country. The world.

But maybe it would fit within the infinite realm of the cosmos. Maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel to like someone, so limitless and breathless and dizzy, and Craig wondered if Tweek ever lay awake in a cold sweat longing like this. If he has ever quivered and ached for something more than drugs and more than peace and more than the cold earth in the palms of his hands.

And before Craig realised it he had fallen into dizzy, dream cluttered sleep.

 

…

 

Cross legged on his floor, amongst piles of old exercise books and crude drawings made in classes that took place years ago, Craig sifted, binning broken pens and casting old notebooks aside as he made his way through the drifts of paper and pointless creative writing assignments. His desk was empty, but now he had to fill it again. He didn’t want to cram everything back inside seeing as he took so log pulling it all out.

He had been meaning to clean out his desk for ages, and despite a particularly restless sleep he had woken with a sense of clarity and purpose, and so it was he decided to get around to doing it today. If he managed, he would reward himself with a trip to Tweek Bros. – a prospect that made him feel kind of ticklish and embarrassed as much as it made him excited to consider. He was hoping to have had this job done by now, but Craig had an unfortunate tendency to get sidetracked by his possessions – the pen token had gotten him for his birthday which was shaped like a dick and balls, the old sketchbook he had when he was fourteen and still obsessed with trying to draw the characters from read racer, and a million other similarly inconsequential items that somehow became of huge fascination. He must have spent fifteen minutes looking at the contents of his sixth grade pencil case, the gel pens he had taken from girls pencil cases when they weren’t looking and the fragments of eraser he used to flick at the back of Clyde’s head during math class, dredging up memories that he had thought lost. Or at least, he had never remembered to remember until now.

Eventually though, he decided to throw the pencil case and its contents away – the pens had dried out and the case itself was stained with ink, so it wasn’t like he could recycle it or anything. He threw away a whole lot of classroom achievement awards from middle school as well, and a wad of marked math quizzes he had been handed back and subsequently crammed into his top drawer. He was just getting on to sorting through a deck of mixed and muddled flash cards, when he heard a fist fall on his bedroom door.

God, his parents weren’t about to try and ask him what he’s been up to for the last month were they? He had hardly seen anyone in his family for weeks and frankly, that was the way he liked it, but his mom and dad were probably by now kind of worried so he shouldn’t have been surprised.

Craig groaned and craned his neck so he could see the door.

“What do you want?”

“Uh… it’s me? Can I come in?”

Clyde Donovan was probably the last person whose voice Craig expected to hear.

“… Sure?”

Confused as to why Clyde would have any inclination to talk to him, Craig set down his handful of flash cards and twisted around as best he could to face Clyde as he inched open the door and peered in

“Just making sure you weren’t jerking it or anything.”

“Oh my god Clyde. What do you want?”

Craig wasn’t capable of patience today. He was jumpy and worked up and all he really wanted was to get his desk cleaned and his person to the coffee shop - he didn’t have time to explain to people like Clyde why it was he had been so moody and quiet the last time they saw each other by the school. He didn’t have time to listen to him talk about Token, or just to generally be in his presence, and so Craig couldn’t help be a little pissed as he watched him cough as though he was kind of _scared_ to be there interrupting Craig’s business and slip completely into the room.

“Your mom said I should just come up…”

“… No shit. What do you _want_ though? I’m kind of in the middle of something?” he gestured to the mess in the middle of his bedroom and Clyde pulled a face.

“God, okay. What’s up your ass today? I just wanted to come by and talk to you a bit about Bebe. If that’s okay.”

Craig could have punched him.

No, that was _not_ okay. Why couldn’t that horrible incident just fade into the past already? It was done. It was _done_. Craig really didn’t want to talk about it.  

He groaned and pushed his hat back off his head, so he could comb his fingers through his hair in annoyance. He realised half way through the process that this was a habit he had only recently acquired, and something he had heard once about the mimicry of people with whom an individual felt affection or intimacy not being unusual came to mind. Almost immediately he felt himself flush and he stopped.

“What about her?” he asked. Clyde looked at him like he was surprised Craig didn’t know.

“… You haven’t heard? She asked me out like… yesterday. Seriously too. Not a joke. I checked.”

Craig blinked, staring at Clyde standing there in his bedroom, not feeling even a pang of envy or annoyance at this news. His indifference was huge, but it was plainly obvious that Clyde was rapt – his best attempts to seem calm and soft spoken in Craig’s presence (just in case he got angry and booted him out) were only halfway decent at hiding his euphoria.

And then, out of nowhere, Craig felt a rush of affection for Clyde that he hadn’t ever felt before in as long as he could possibly remember.

Not once.

And Craig had known Clyde Donovan his whole life. There had even been times when Craig enjoyed his company. But to actually feel a sense of genuine care for him was strange and unexpected and it made Craig realise quite spontaneously that maybe he took his friends for granted.

Maybe he has _always_ taken his friends for granted. Especially Clyde in his stupid letterman jacket and low crotch chinos, and Craig watched him slip his hands into his pockets and shrug sheepishly as if he was waiting for Craig to snap at him. To tell him to fuck off or that he was a pathetic sap who Bebe was only going to stomp all over again.

But Craig didn’t. Instead he sighed and gestured to his bed, so Clyde could sit down on the end.

“No I hadn’t heard.” He said, picking up a fragment of a reading report written in fifth grade, with a little C- written on the corner. “But you know what, good for you. I’m glad. And I’m also serious, by the way. Just so you don’t have to check.” He wasn’t going to go as far as to give Clyde a smile, but he figured a few reasonably amicable words couldn’t hurt. “She and you are good for each other I think. She likes attention and you can’t keep your eyes off her, so it works out right for everyone in the end.”

Clyde seemed shocked. He stood there for about twenty seconds processing Craig’s words, before he moved for the foot of the bed and tried to respond.

“… You don’t mind?” he asked, and Craig shook his head.

“Why would I mind?”

“Well, because she liked _you_ , remember? But when I asked her about that, she gave me some bullshit story about having a heart to heart with you and you saying something about me that made her realise she did want to give me a chance after all.”  
“What’s so bullshit about that?”

“Well for one, you hate me, so I was pretty sure you wouldn’t say anything like that to her. I’m pretty convinced you actually take pleasure from my misery.”

“Well, yeah. But just because you’re a piece of piss Clyde doesn’t mean I’m going to not tell the truth about you. Even if the truth is actually kind of flattering.”

Craig was trying to work out what it was he had said that had sold Bebe on him, where Clyde had been trying for years to no avail. Was it that stuff about Clyde being in love with her? If so, he felt a little self-satisfied swell of pride in his chest because for some reason, knowing that he had actively participated in making someone he was acquainted with happy brought him pleasure. Actual _pleasure_. He actually liked the feeling of having helped this dense motherfucker out.

What was happening to him?!

And why was it that for some reason, he didn’t mind?

Clyde looked very confused for a moment, and then very touched.

“… Well, okay then. I guess… thanks. I appreciate it.”

Craig shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, and returned his attention to his sorting. He figured Clyde would head off now, once they had cleared that up. He was surprised when after about forty seconds of not moving, Clyde opened his mouth and said something else.

“Have you been okay lately? I mean, we’ve hardly seen you most of the summer, and you haven’t looked your best most of that time.”

Craig winced.

He didn’t really want to answer that.

“I’m fine.” He said, and hoped Clyde wouldn’t question him too much further. He felt better than he _had_ right now. He wasn’t perfect, but he was adequate, and Clyde’s speculation was making him a little uncomfortable – there was something unpleasant about the realisation that Craig was not, in fact, invisible to all but a select few. “I dunno. I’ve been procrastinating doing this whole… cleaning thing.” He gestured to the state of his bedroom, and hoped that the thought that having cleaning to do was not really an appropriate reason for the way Craig had been behaving did not occur to his friend.

“Really? Because Stan told Kyle who told Butters who told us that you’ve been working at the Tweak’s coffee shop overnight for the last few weeks. So I figured you might just have been tired from all that.”

Craig fumbled his grip on the pencils he was sorting and stared at Clyde in absolute horror.

“ _What_?”

“Stan. He told Kyle, who told Butters, who told us, that he saw you a couple of weeks ago at Tweek bros. Apparently you and Tweek were like… hanging out on the steps smoking or something. I dunno.”

Craig felt a large bubble of embarrassment rise in his chest. His cheeks turned hot against his will, and he _wished_ he could have salvaged the situation, but when he opened his mouth to make excuses nothing came out.

He wasn’t ready yet.

He wasn’t prepared to tell anyone about this yet. His job was unimportant background static now, but his relationship with Tweek (and whatever complicated dimensions it might have) were as yet new, still even to him, and he didn’t want people _knowing_. Questioning and judging. It wasn’t okay.

“… What are you implying?” he demanded eventually, when he pulled himself together enough to form a sentence. His skin was crawling with discomfort, and Clyde gave him a knowing kind of look that made him _furious_.

“I’m not implying. I’m just asking you. You’ve been working at Tweek Bros. and that’s why we haven’t seen you. Also, sounds like you’ve been talking to Tweek. But uh… that’s not my business I guess.”

“No,” Craig told him hotly. “Its _not_. Could you fuck off now Clyde, I’m trying to clean my room.”

Clyde sighed and stood up wearily.

“Craig, can you just stop being so anti for once? You’ve always been a fucking weirdo and we didn’t hate you for it. We aren’t going to take the piss out of you just because you hang around an eccentric. Geeze, he’s probably not even that bad.”

Clyde shuffled toward the door, and Craig watched him with a fierce defensiveness that was ready to become aggression at any minute.

“I was only coming by to say thanks though, mostly. You really don’t seem to like me but I dunno. I always thought you were kind of my best bro.”

And Craig kind of wished he had been nicer to him, after hearing that.

 

…

 

That afternoon, Craig found himself willingly heading to Tweek Bros. during daylight hours, although he couldn’t make much sense of how he was feeling with regards to Clyde and Butters and Stan gossiping about him or whatever he _did_ know that he was excited to see Tweek. The butterflies in his stomach were a great indicator of emotion, and the leg-wobbling jerk of anticipation he felt as he rounded the corner and Tweek Bros coffee shop appeared on the horizon was undeniable.

He tried to maintain his chill as he approached, and after checking his reflection in the window sort of like he had that first morning he applied to work here, he decided he looked presentable enough to enter. Not that Tweek hadn’t seen him looking like an utter piece of shit before.

Craig exhaled a breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding as he slipped inside, and the smell of coffee beans and baking muffins hit him full in the face. As indicated by the three or four cars parked on the road outside, business seemed good today, and Craig recognised Tweek’s mom working the counter in her usual turquoise dress. Surely she wasn’t the _only_ one working?

He craned his neck around to see if he could spot a tall boy with silver hair bussing tables or mopping the floor, but he couldn’t, and a vague sense of disappointment made him consider leaving. Going back home and curling up in bed and whining because he wanted to be around Tweek so fucking bad it hurt like a belly ache. He cleaned his entire desk for this!

Instead he tensed his jaw and strode forward toward the front counter. Maybe if he just asked, she wouldn’t notice he was squirmy and ticklish in his clothes today. That his face felt hot and his hands started shaking just _thinking_ about whether or not Tweek would look the same as he always did now he had realised. Perhaps, when Craig set eyes on him, his heart or his hormones or whatever this was would settle down and everything would be all right?

But Craig was almost certain he didn’t _want_ this feeling to settle down now. The thought of going back to the way he was before made him want to cry.

“Is Tweek here?” he practically shouted as he approached the counter, and clearly more highly strung than her husband Tweek’s mother jumped. She was a slim, wraith-like woman, with features that made Craig think of uncanny valleys and porcelain dolls.

“Oh! Goodness, you gave me a fright. You’re his friend aren’t you? The boy who stayed over a few weeks ago?”

Craig nodded, swallowing a fluttery feeling as he did, and Tweek’s mothers face broke into a pretty even smile that Craig recognised well by now. The resemblance between her and her son was greater than that between Tweek and his father.

“Well, he’s cleaning the bathrooms at the moment, but if you like you can go get him? Tell him he can have a break now. Would you like a muffin?” she gestured to the food case next to the counter, and Craig’s eyes swept over the muffins and sandwiches and settled on three cinnamon rolls on the top shelf. Craig hadn’t realised Tweek Bros. sold cinnamon rolls – Usually, by the time he started his shift, the only food they had left was stale muffins.

“Uh, no thanks. I’m okay.”

“Shhhh… I insist.” She nodded eagerly and pulled a brown paper bag and a pair of tongs off the top of the cabinet. “If you prefer, have a piece of slice. Or a macaroon. Anything.”

Craig’s eyes flickered to the cinnamon rolls again. Much to his embarrassment, she noticed.

“Ah! This is the one you want?” She reached into the cabinet and looked at Craig with a joyful sort of expectation on her face. He felt himself blushing and eventually, he had to avert his eyes.

Fucking hell. All he wanted to do was see Tweek, but now he found himself face to face with a woman who was gushing at him like she thought he was the most radiant human being who ever lived or something. Was she really _that_ excited that Tweek had made a friend? Had the situation really been that dire?

“Yes please.” He said, and she quickly placed the sweet into the bag and passed it to him. Her fingernails were perfect ovals, painted a pale and glossy pink.

When she beamed at him again, Craig gave her an awkward little smile in return and turned toward the men’s toilets, which had a yellow ‘CLEANING IN PROGRESS – SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE’ sign propped in front of it. He stepped around it, and with slightly trembling hands he pushed open the door.

“… Tweek?”

A short gasp of surprise, followed by a cringe worthy clunk and a loud curse, indicated that Tweek was in here just as his mother had said. He had been scrubbing the drains out under the sink, and Craig felt a pang of guilt when he realised that his entrance had caused an unfortunate collision between Tweek’s head and a u-bend pipe. The long-legged boy sitting uncomfortably on the tiled floor looked confused and embarrassed, his hands held up by his head as though he wanted to cradle it, but didn’t want to get the gross slimy gloves he was wearing anywhere near his hair.

“Craig?!” he asked, and he sounded just pissed off enough that Craig felt the unfortunate urge to giggle at him in shame. “What are you doing here? Way to give me a concussion!”

“Sorry! I’m sorry. I just… I was going to text you, but then I figured I may as well come by and… uh…” Craig lost track of his little white lie, watching Tweek press his lips together in a way that said he wanted to stay annoyed, but couldn’t really, and peel off his plastic cleaning gloves. “… What’s up with the drains?”

“Oh god, some asshole decided to cram this in there.” He jerked his head to a bucket by his foot, the contents of which looked to be a wad of soggy old hand towels and a rubber iPhone case. He threw his gloves unceremoniously into the bucket and wrinkled his nose in disgust when they made a wet slapping sound on the bottom. “You’re here a few days early for shift you know.”

“I know. I haven’t heard from you in ages, so I just kinda…” he shrugged coolly, and averted his eyes. Turns out, seeing Tweek with his pastel hair and milk splattered apron had only made the ache in his guts worse. He wanted to tell himself that it was unwholesome, to feel this much attraction to another human, but he couldn’t. Tweek sighed and Craig heard him stand up, turning on the tap at the sink next to him and squirting a liberal amount of soap onto the palms of his hands.

“Sorry.” He said, and Craig’s eyes twitched back to him. Tweek was very clinical when it came to washing his hands, always getting between his fingers and the lower halves of his forearms thoroughly soapy before rinsing it off. Craig would have liked to look at his forearms a little longer, but he didn’t have much of a chance. As soon as they were rinsed Tweek was wiping them down with a paper towel and adjusting the sleeves of his raglan – Craig bit the inside of his cheek and locked eyes with him, despite the wobbly sensations in his legs.

“I was going to text you too, but then I realised you probably didn’t want me bothering your uh… Kenny stuff.”

“Kenny who?” Craig felt his eyes flutter and his cheeks warm, but he refused to betray the way his heart was racing when he talked. “Your mom asked me to tell you you can have a break now, by the way. She gave me a cinnamon roll.” He held up the brown paper bag to show him, and he watched confusion flicker over Tweek’s features like candlelight, then disappear again into the usual slightly wary expression he wore on a daily basis.

“Okay.” He said carefully, picking up the bucket. “Let me just pack up and we can sit and chat maybe? Do you want me to make you a coffee?”

Craig shook his head and gestured out the door, back into the coffee shop.

“No. I’ll be sitting in the booth by the window.”

He had bought a diet coke on the nervous walk over here, thinking he should probably go into this pre-caffeinated and wary as possible just in case he ended up embarrassing himself. As such, he wasn’t all that thirsty.

 

…

 

“Your hair looks good today.” Craig said as Tweek sat down opposite him, regretting it immediately because Tweek inhaled as though he was unsure if Craig was just saying it to stop him feeling shitty, or if he really meant he liked the colour, and the way he had it pinned back to stop his bangs from getting into his face.

“Dad says I need to cut it.” he murmured dismissively, pushing his coffee cup in between them and settling against the cushioned seat. “He says it makes me look like a girl.”

“It doesn’t.” Craig assured him, thinking that no one could ever mistake Tweek for a girl – he was too tall and broad shouldered for that kind of silliness, even if his hair was touching his collar. “I like it. I really do.”

“I hate having haircuts anyway. You know people can put curses on you when you get your hair cut? All they need is a single strand and that’s it. It’s all over, man.”

He sipped his drink, as though this was the most normal thing in the world to say, and Craig frowned because however terrifying he was sure the idea of being cursed by someone could be, he was unsure that could be considered quite as factual as Tweek had presented it.

“You know you loose like… a hundred stands of hair every day anyway?” he asked, and Tweek shook his head quite confidently.

“Doesn’t count. The hair has to be cut. If it falls out, its dead hair. But if you cut it off then technically its still alive and linked to the person it came from.”

“Did you read that in one of those books?”

Tweek nodded and placed his coffee carefully on the table in front of him. Craig felt his stomach lurch and his skin prickle when he saw Tweek’s hands, and the sharp points where his knuckles jutted out. He had a Spongebob Squarepants bandage on his left pinky.

“… You seem back to normal.” Craig commented, realising suddenly how much he had missed this bizarre little calmness Tweek could fake when he was feeling in control. It had been so charming all those weeks ago, and Craig felt himself being pulled toward him all over again in real time. The fresh realisation that he really, _really_ liked this guy hit him with a force that made him breathless, and he thought it was audible in his voice when he was speaking. “Like… better I guess. You look less sick, anyway.”

Tweek gave Craig a distant smile, although it was not devoid of warmth or affection, and shrugged. “I am starting to think I will be okay.”

Craig felt his stomach turn over quite dramatically.

“Of course you will. I promise.”

“Are you okay though?” Tweek arched an eyebrow and Craig had to draw in a deep breath and prepare himself to say he was okay. He was normal. A completely different human yes, but alive.

“I am now.” He said honestly. “I’ve had a weird week. There was this whole crazy… Thing with Kenny? Sorry I never told you about it, but I didn’t want to tell _anyone_ so I just kind of-“

“Seriously, I don’t think I wanted to know.” Tweek cut him off and nudged his cup of coffee toward Craig invitingly. Craig glanced at it and considered taking a sip. He had eaten the whole cinnamon roll while he had been waiting for Tweek to brew himself a cup, and as such his tongue was dry with the lingering sweetness of the frosting. Of course, the coffee smelled beyond delicious.

“I was having a really fucked up time.” Tweek continued. “And I could tell you were not okay but I think dealing with your stress as well as mine would probably have been way too much pressure for me to handle. It sounds kind of selfish, but it is what it is and I really am sorry for being a shit friend.”

“You don’t need to apologise for that. I think it was something I needed to figure on my own.” Craig clasped his hands around the drink and found the warmth comforting. He sighed and gazed out the window to the sky outside. Usually, when he sat in this booth that sky was dark and starry, but today it was still a faded blue. In about an hour, it would begin to bleed purple and red, and by seven pm when his breath was fogging and he had to pull socks on to fight the chill, it would be glittering and breathtaking all over again.

“Besides, I’d never even told myself I liked guys before. How could I tell someone who might have thought it was weird or something? You’re the only person I’ve ever cared… you know. What you think of me and that.”

“Well, that’s flattering. I guess… You’re the only person I can tolerate being around without wondering if you secretly hate me.”

“Why is that?”

Tweek shrugged, and Craig watched him over the lip of the borrowed coffee cup as he sipped it. His heart thumped when he thought he was tasting the ghost of Tweek’s mouth on the plastic.

“I dunno. You are an honest person. And I like how you don’t expect anything from me.”

Craig felt the corners of his lips curve up, and he was glad that Tweek liked to be around him. It meant a lot.

“We should hang out more.” He said finally. “Like… during the weekends and stuff. Maybe we could go do something when you have a day off next?”

“I finish at six tonight.” Tweek told him. “We could go do something this evening? A movie maybe?”

“… A movie?”

That sounded a little too much like sitting in silence not talking to satisfy him, but at the same time it smacked of secret possibilities. Accidental hand touches. Maybe sliding down the back of the seat and letting his head fall surreptitiously against Tweek’s shoulder. He wouldn’t panic about that would he? Craig didn’t want to make it awkward, but now that he was sitting there in front of him Craig was almost overwhelmed by how attracted he was to this boy. How much he wanted to touch him and listen to him and stare at the thin shallow creases around his lips. The mind boggled, at how he could have possibly not noticed the phenomenal crush he had been developing all summer, and although he couldn’t pinpoint a start he knew in his bones it had to have begun long before he ever entered shaky ground with Kenny or Bebe. Maybe it was the first time Craig saw him smoking?

Maybe it was the first time he had watched Tweek and seen him. Really seen _him_ , not just seen the flimsy, crazy, unpredictable wreck everyone had told him he was supposed to be.

Craig swallowed and tried to ignore the fact that he Tweek had never, at any point during their friendship, given him even the slightest sense of being attracted to him as more than a companion anyway. It was okay. Craig could get by on that. And as long as the recollection that Tweek had already fucked some strange girl didn’t surface too frequently in his mind maybe Craig could lie to himself and pretend like this friendship was more than that.

Perhaps some vague periphery of intimacy that neither really wanted to acknowledge. That was fine.

All the same, he couldn’t fathom sitting in an enclosed dark space with Tweek just yet, in case he lost control and tried to feel him up in the dim.

He shook his head and passed Tweek back his coffee.

“Nah, I’ve been inside all summer. We can go for a walk or something. I dunno. Just talk a bit and walk around and see what there is to see.”

Tweek smiled at him, and hooked a strand of hair behind his ear.

“Alright.”

Craig left the coffee shop in high spirits. As he walked out the door, he spotted two people coming toward him from outside and held the door open for them out of habit. One was tall, with curling red hair, and the other was much shorter with dark hair and eyes as blue as the pond on a still day. The red-headed boy wore a borrowed varsity jacket, the breast of which said MARSH in large white letters. As he slipped through the door in the wake of his company, Craig caught his eye.

He had brown eyes. Like Craig’s. He had shadows underneath them and a distant sort of look, like he was trying and trying to stay present when all he really wanted to do was run far away.

“Craig.” He said coolly, and Craig nodded at him in response.

“Kyle.”

Craig let the door swing shut behind the two of them, and lingered for a moment outside. Stan’s corolla was parked on the road opposite, its tires balding and its doors dusty, and in the late afternoon its windshields glinted bright like winking eyes. Craig sighed and felt a strange kind of empathy for Kyle. He wondered for a moment if that kind of longing was something everyone adjusted to eventually, or if it was the kind of thing that lingered so long in some peoples lives that it eventually became a part of them. Like their skin, or their hair, or their smile.

Getting older sure was complicated.

Craig caught himself before he became distracted by these thoughts, and drew in a deep breath of crisp afternoon air. He had a meeting with Tweek tonight at six pm. For now, that was better than nothing.


	18. Cute boyfriends hanging out in graveyards talking about death is my aesthetic.

 

Six pm seemed to take forever to happen.

Craig lingered outside of the coffee shop for ten minutes before Tweek finished, and each passing second felt like a decade but the hour arrived at the precise time it always did, and not three minutes later Tweek was slipping outside to meet him, wearing a neat black blazer and a scarf the colour of mint ice cream, a tall hot chocolate in his hand.

“It’s uh, pretty cold.” He told Craig, pressing the drink into Craig’s icy palm and giving him a lovely smile. “Are you sure you don’t want to go to a movie?”

Craig shook his head and looked down into the lid of the drink he was holding. Someone had drawn a picture of Saturn on it in magic marker, and a cloud of little five pointed stars to keep it company.

“Cute drawings.” He observed.

Tweek shrugged and buried his chin behind his scarf.

“It got kind of quiet around five thirty.”

As if that was some kind of an explanation.

Craig flushed, hoped his company didn’t notice, and jerked his head in the general direction of the street.

“I know somewhere we can go.” He said, and Tweek’s eyebrows crept up in curiosity. “Me and Clyde and Token used to go there to look at playboys when we were kids.”

This was a true fact Craig had almost forgotten about until that morning, when his desk cleaning had unearthed a copy of that particular publication, probably lifted from the stack in the back of Clyde’s dads closet years ago. Craig recalled the location spontaneously, just as he was looking into Tweek’s face and trying to figure out if he looked a little more nervous than usual or if it was just the late evening shadows obscuring his features.

“Uh, really? Wow, okay. Sure I guess.”

Craig pressed the lid of his drink against his bottom lip and balled his spare hand in his pocket.

“Don’t look so spooked.” He said. “You’ll like it probably. Maybe. Either that, or you will hate it.”

“Oh Jesus Christ.”

Tweek followed him anyway, and the two of them walked in silence along the street. Craig felt the silence was thick and awkward, but that was probably just because he could sense Tweek only a few inches away and no matter how hard he tried to think of something to talk about he found his mind was completely blank. Tweek seemed comfortable enough – as comfortable as he ever was anyway. Once or twice, as they walked past houses with lit up windows and mail boxes with numbers glinting in the light of the streetlamps, a vehicle would round the corner of a nearby side street and startle him. Craig thought this was a little bit funny, and had to try quite hard to contain small giggles at his reaction.

“The lights are really bright!” Tweek told him suddenly, in the aftermath of this exact thing happening and still a good ten minutes walk away from their destination. He dropped the arm he had been using to shield his eyes from the headlamps as the vehicle drove past and hummed down the street away from them, and gave Craig a slightly pissed off look. Like he knew Craig was entertained by his concerns.

“I’m not arguing that.” Craig said. “It’s just kind of cute when you jump like that I guess.”

He said it before he thought about it, and immediately regretted it when Tweek looked at him like he had just said something shocking.

“… What now?”

“Nothing. I didn’t mean anything by it.” He shook his head frantically and looked down at the pavement underneath his feet. “You just remind me of Mojo sometimes. That’s my guinea pig by the way. I have two. So, uh… yeah.”

Tweek looked at him a moment longer, coughed quietly, and slid his hands into his blazer pockets.

“… Okay.”

He answered, and that was the end of the conversation.

They finished the walk to their destination, once again in silence.

 

…

 

Craig had been correct in predicting Tweek would like the place they were going – The old churchyard by the edge of the woods was decaying and pretty in the same way Craig thought Tweek’s books were, and even though there hadn’t been services in the chapel since 2007 when the new church was built closer to the centre of town, the gates to the property were well maintained and not squeaky at all. This was fortunate, as rusty hinges seemed like the kind of thing that might be high on the list of things likely to grate Tweek’s frayed nerves. Large mercury vapour lamps illuminated the churchyard in an effort to deter vandals and loiterers like themselves. Mostly, it had worked. Young teenage no goods and Goth kids from the years below saw no point in hanging out in a cemetery where everyone could see them from the street, even if cars driving down these parts were rare if ever they came by at all. As such, the worst damage that had been done to the property since its closure was a few racked stone crosses and a fence that had fallen victim to some brambles. Craig pulled the gate closed behind them and watched Tweek step into the shadow behind the church.

“Holy shit.” He said quietly, and Craig heard the long grass rustle under his shoes as he walked. “I remember this place.”

“We came here one time fore a field trip, remember?”

“No, I remember… some time else.”

“What time?”

Tweek’s shadowy shape shrugged, and he edged along the stony back wall of the chapel toward the wall on the other side. The graveyard was bordered by hedges and pickets, and fir trees which had shied into the area from the forest. The forest had for many years now had been encroaching onto the edge of town, and in areas where no one ever really came this was more far more obvious.

“I dunno. Its like… you know when you see something or smell something and you remember… but you don’t know what it is or even if the thing you remember is real?”

“You mean like a false memory?”

“Maybe.”

Craig folded his arms across his chest and transferred his entire weight onto his left hip without realising it. His mind was elsewhere, trying to pin down exactly what Tweek meant, but he kept getting distracted by the vague sense of this moment being little more than a daydream or a fantasy – when the wind rustled the trees and the chill in the air made his breath silvery like mist, he wondered if he was seeing everything right or if this was someone else’s life. He should be at home right now, in bed playing games. But he wasn’t. He was here with Tweek and he was so _happy_ , even if this was a little spooky and weird.

He smiled to himself and watched Tweek run his hand over the rim of a mossy headstone.

“This is a little more macabre than I had you figured for, Craig.”

“I’m full of fuckin surprises.” He countered, and Tweek screwed up his nose at him.

“And what would you have done if I had panicked and refused to even _walk_ on possibly haunted ground?”

“You are too self-aware for your own good, you know that?”

“Jesus Christ, you don’t think that might be the death of me, do you?”

Craig had to turn away from his friend to hide his grin.

He found himself standing face to face with a large marble angel, something which gave him no small fright despite the vivid blue lamplight flooding the churchyard, and he hoped like hell Tweek hadn’t seen him jumping because that would have been a terribly embarrassing example of role reversal. He caught his chest in his hand and sucked a deep breath into his chest, to calm himself.

The angel in question was a sorry looking character anyway, whose face was weathered and weary and who elevated a well worn lantern in his hand. Looking onto the shallow hollows where his eyes were made Craig’s skin prickle in the aftermath of his surprise, and he looked away almost immediately. Sometimes, when he was alone, he found himself seized by an uncanny sense of being watched, but right now he felt strangely as if he was _not_ being watched. As though he was unseen here, and unperceived, and he found himself thinking about whether or not his existence necessitated some kind of observation. How unpleasant. Was Tweek paying him attention right now or was he too lost in wonder at the crumbling chapel walls?

He decided to break this eerie loss of confidence in his own existence by raising conversation.

“Hey, come look at this.” he said, quite loudly.

He almost shat his pants _again_ when Tweek answered from right behind him.

“What? The angel?”

“Holy fucking shit Tweek what the _fuck_?!” he flung a hand out to strike him without thinking, and Tweek laughed.

“You are more highly strung than you let on,” he said gently, nudging past Craig so he could crouch and look at the name engraved on the stone under the angel’s feet. “I saw you jump when you turned around.”

Craig grumbled something incoherent and rubbed his upper arms to get his skin to stop pricking. He turned his gaze up to the large lamps illuminating the area, and thought that despite the manner in which they flooded the space, the cold chemical blue of them made it so that it was really no less creepy here than if they hadn’t existed at all. Everything looked so black and white under them, and the brightness was making a cold sweat bead against the back of his shirt.

“So?”

“So you wanted to come here.”

“I’ve never been here at night before. I thought it’d be less…”

Like something out of a dream.

Tweek hummed and stood up, his knees cracked mutedly when he did so and Craig caught a lick of his perfume when he hooked a thread of hair behind his ear.

“This gravestone is one of Kenny’s relations.” He observed, in a tone which seemed uninterested but also seemed tense with an effort to maintain indifference. Craig had to check this, even though there was no reason not to believe him, and found that he was correct. The surname MCCORMICK was faint, but obviously etched into the plaque there.

“Yeah… I think my dad’s grandma was buried here.”

“Probably. I think everyone who ever died in South Park was buried here.” Tweek looked up, his eyes fixing on one of the large lamps overhead. “At least, until they relocated I mean. Do you ever think much about where you will be buried, Craig?”

“… What the fuck kind of a question is that?”

One he probably should have expected, considering Tweek’s weird pre-occupation with his premature demise.

 His fluttered his eyes and looked away from the lights.

“I dunno… you wanted to hang out and talk. So I guess I’m just saying stuff?”

Craig squeezed his arms tighter around himself and sighed.

“… You wanna see where I used to hang out with the others then?” he asked, and Tweek nodded.

Craig lead him down the back path, through a small little gap against the side of the church and the fence, and into a crooked and dark little space which smelled faintly of damp and moss and cold wet stone. Several years ago, a figurine of the holy mother stood here, among neatly kept roses and behind a sundial which had also been removed. Now the space was empty, almost completely canopied by fir tree branches and only really big enough for a small gaggle of thirteen year olds and their pornography. Or maybe two grown teenagers looking for somewhere to sit and talk and stare up and the blinding blue lights obscuring the stars.

“Oh, god. I _definitely_ remember this place.” A little note of stress found itself into Tweek’s voice now, and Craig hoped he hadn’t pushed the boy’s nerves too far. God it was hard to judge what would set him off and what wouldn’t. Craig was pretty much just making this up as he went along.

Much to his relief though, when Craig looked at him it was an expression of distaste, not terror, that twisted his features.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. One time my mother brought me out here during a service because hearing about hell used to give me panic attacks. But we left as soon as we arrived because when we got here Eric Cartman’s mother was blowing one of the men from the congregation.”

This made Craig laugh quite heartily, and he thought that for a churchyard this small space sure had seen a lot of unnecessary sexual shenanigans.

“What the fuck? How old were you?”

“Maybe seven?”

“That’s horrifying.”

“You’re telling me. Sometimes I think people are more horrifying than ghosts or aliens or corpses could _ever_ be.”

“That’s probably accurate.” Craig told him, scuffing his feet on the mossy brickwork he knew was underneath the rubber soles of his sneakers. “But some people are okay, I think.”

“Are they?”

“Sure. I mean I don’t really like people, but I would rather hang out with people than with ghosts.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Have you ever seen a ghost then?”

Tweek gave him an unintelligible look, and a cold breeze rattled in the empty eves of the broken old chapel beside them. Craig picked up immediately that he was trying to gauge if he was being serious, and immediately an uncomfortable chill slipped down his spine.

He hadn’t been. But now he thought about it he probably wasn’t the person, and this probably wasn’t the place to joke about things like that.

 “I think so.” Tweek said eventually. “Sometimes. But then again it’s hard to be sure if ghosts are ghosts or if I’m just seeing things which are only real in my head.”

“… Really?”

“Really. There are times when I loose track of reality, and there are times when reality feels far too real to tolerate, if you feel me. I start over thinking stuff and eventually even things as mundane as the stones and the dirt start to feel like something unlikely or even impossible given the random and uncaring nature of our universe.”

“That’s kind of poetic, I guess.”

“Not really. I’m pretty sure I’m quoting someone right now but I can’t remember who it is I’m quoting.” He grinned and twisted a lock of blonde hair around one of his fingers. “Craig, can I ask you a favour?”

Craig felt his stomach twist pleasantly and his cheeks warm up. Week wanted a favour from _him_? What kind of a favour? All kinds of truly ridiculous things rose to the surface of Craig’s mind, and much to his embarrassment the first one was the hope that Tweek was going to ask for a blow job. Maybe. Who knows?

“… Depends what it is.”

“Tell me what you see.”

He pointed to the small space of light bleached sky above them, framed by treetops and the severe tiled line of the church roof, and Craig frowned. That answer was too easy, and he forced himself to forget that for a fleeting fraction of a second there he had thought he was going to get down on his knees on the cold damp bricks and shove this guys genitals in his mouth.

“The sky?” he asked, and Tweek chewed his cheek nervously.

“Is that it?”

Craig nodded.

His legs practically gave way underneath his weight when a loud crackling hiss echoed behind them, and out of sight the lamps which shone to deter teenagers and monsters alike shuttered off like dominos falling in a row. Tweek gasped loudly, and caught Craig’s arm in a vice like grip.

“It’s okay! It’s okay! Don’t freak out!”

Craig, however, could hardly breath from shock and panic, let alone tell him to shut the fuck up and let him have a heart attack. His chest was absolutely pounding, and he thought the world was spinning far too quickly around him for him to be comfortable. The whole courtyard, churchyard and sky had been plunged into perfect darkness, and the vivid silver pinpricks overhead blurred in front of his eyes.

“What do you see?”

“Stars!” he yelped, and Tweek squeezed his arm tighter, wordlessly telling him to calm down, catch his breath, and not to panic because it was okay. It was okay. There were not ghosts here, just the two of them. 

His fingers sunk into Craig’s arm so tightly that even in the thick endless black of  the nighttime, Craig knew they were leaving marks like violet petals on his skin.

 

…

 

The bruises on his arm were dark red and blotchy yellow the next morning, and he lay I bed pressing his fingers against them and savouring the ache because he wanted them to last forever, like a tattoo, and he wanted to remember the exhilarated moment of terror  that came from feeling an icy hand curl around his forearm in the dark, but already the memory was fading just like one by one the stars had faded away and the lamps had guttered back on in slow motion. His head ached and he felt kind of like he might be coming down with something as he dragged himself out of bed and made his way to Kenny’s that afternoon, but he felt okay emotionally so he didn’t mind. He didn’t even care that he had to climb over a stack of sofa cushions on his effort to reach Kenny’s door when he got there, or that Kenny’s older brother answered when he knocked.

“Kenny home?” he asked, and without any challenges or questions he was allowed through. Again he passed into the McCormick household, and again he was struck by how sticky and unpleasant the carpet was, but rather than being directed through to his bedroom Kenny’s brother indicated toward the kitchen, where the sounds of metallic 80s guitar riffs were disturbing the otherwise peaceful morning.

“… Kenny?”

“Yo!”

Kenny looked up from what he was doing, stirring a large bowl full of what looked like butter and melted sugar, and the tall pretty girl he had called Karen last time Craig stopped by almost dropped the bag off flour she had been holding. The girl was almost as nervous as Tweek was, apparently.

“Uh… yo?”

Craig looked at the scene in puzzlement, trying to figure out since when Kenny had had any kind of inclination toward home cookery. Besides the several years he spent in home economics, that is. Kenny gave him an impish grin and gestured to the mess of sugar and flour and teaspoons on the kitchen table.

“Me and Karen were just putting together some food for her birthday on Saturday. Sugar cookies.”

Craig didn’t ask where Kenny got the money too pay for baking ingredients. Instead he folded his arms and frowned at him, ignoring the fact that he had only just realised he was hungry.

“I didn’t know you were into good housekeeping.”

Kenny shrugged and held out the bowl of sugar and butter.

“Gotta please my number one lady, amiright?”

Karen blushed and swept her hair behind her shoulder in embarassment, but Craig could see she was obviously pleased to be acknowledged as Kenny’s top priority.

“Come get me when you guys are finished talking.” She murmured, placing the bag of flower down carefully and edging past Craig through the kitchen door. She smelt like cheap soap and hello kitty body spray, and Craig wondered if it would be worth introducing her to Ruby sometime. As much of a little bitch as his own sister could be, Craig thought Karen looked like she could use a friend who wasn’t her big brother, and Ruby was actually kind of nice to people who didn’t actively try and disturb her wellbeing, like he did.

“How old is she turning?” Craig asked Kenny once he was sure she was ot of earshot. Kenny dragged his finger through the sugar butter mixture and looked thoughtful, as if he didn’t know the number off the top of his head.

“Twelve?” he asked Craig, and Craig arched his eyebrows in surprise.

“Only twelve?”

“She’s kind of tall, yeah. She’s smart as hell too. Pretty much the opposite to me in every way.”

Craig decided he would pursue this later – he had more important matters on his mind.

“Right. Okay. Well, sorry to interrupt…”

“It’s fine. I was expecting you.” He sucked the sugar butter mix off his finger and jerked his head in the direction of his cell phone, on the sink. “I didn’t text back, but I knew you were coming. Sure I can’t tempt you?”

He thrust the bowl out further and Craig sighed.

“Yeah okay.”

He gave in to temptation and took a large dollop. It was sweet and salty and gritty, and Craig enjoyed it very much. Kenny hummed in approval and set the bowl down on the table next to his baking gear.

“So, what do you want this time?”

“Well, I said in the text I needed to ask you some stuff about Tweek, if that’s okay.”

Kenny made a face like it wasn’t, but responded in the affirmative when he picked a tea towel off the back of a table chair and wiped his hands.

“let me just put a jacket on.” He said, reaching over to switch off the small battery powered radio blasting Motley Crue. “We can go for a walk, I need to drop some stuff off somewhere anyway.”

Craig had no problems with this. He nodded, and headed out to wait for Kenny by the door.

 

…

 

“So, what kind of problem you having now?”

Kenny walked balancing on the rail road tracks, and even though his voice was muffled by his jacket Craig knew what he was saying and already had an answer on hand.

“You gotta tell me what the deal is with Tweek.”

Craig had been thinking about it all night, and he couldn’t strike the whole uncanny incident from his mind. The more he thought about those moments, the perfect coincidence and the buzzing of extinguished lamps, the more he thought about what Kenny had said. Tweek acted strange sometimes, and not in the normal sense of the term strange either. Strange things happened around him, shuttering lights and bizarre feelings and other things, and Craig needed confirmation that he wasn’t crazy now. That he wasn’t just following feelings that had arisen because Tweek was like some kind of magnetic entity.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I like that you’ve changed your direction Craig, but you can’t deny that you really do have fucked up taste.”

Craig blushed and gave Kenny the filthiest look he could possibly muster.

“I’m not asking you to criticise my taste in men. I just want you to tell me what his deal is. You know?”

Kenny sniggered and bounced off the edge of the train tracks, landing clumsily on the grass and crunching the frosty bits where the sun still hadn’t melted the chill away. It was a freezing morning, even though the sky was bleached white and blue, and just like it had the night before Craig’s breath silvered on the air in front of him.

“Where are we going anyway?” he asked, as they turned down a road in a part of town Craig never went to. It was the richer suburban area, where all the fences were white pickets and all the cars were 2010 Toyota Camrys. Kind of one rank higher than the lower middle class neighbourhoods Craig grew up in, but definitely a world away from Kenny’s humble abode.

“I said, I need to drop some stuff off. Nothing major. And as for Tweek… well… I dunno. What do _you_ think is his deal?”

“If I told you that, you would laugh.”

Kenny sniggered anyway, and pushed his shoulder against Craig’s upper arm good naturedly. This of course knocked his bruises, but Craig didn’t really mind.

“Try me.”

Okay, fine.

Craig figured he may as well try, even though he was sure it would sound ridiculous saying it out loud.

“Okay. Well, remember when you asked me if Tweek ever acted abnormally?”

“Mmm…”

“Well, by abnormally, did you mean like… staring at things that aren’t there, guessing the future, that kind of thing?”

He tried to make it sound as casual as possible, but it still sounded like something heavy handed and stupid. Craig wished he could express that the confusion he was having about Tweek’s behaviours were more subtle than that, but sadly this was one of those issues that could hardly be broached by the English language. He was just going to have to use approximations.

Kenny made a sound that didn’t really confirm any of his supoicions, and steered them off their path directly down the middle of the road so that a van full of children could drive past without incident.

“Maybe… why, is he predicting your fortune in coffee grinds or something?”

“No, nothing like that. It’s just… a whole lot of little things, you know? Flickering lights, weird conversations…”

“Well, yeah. I guess that’s kind of expected. I mean… Tweek is like… hmm…” he looked contemplative, an expression Craig found flattering on his features. “In some ways, I think he reminds me of me. Maybe that’s way I don’t like him? He gives me the heebies, anyway.” He pointed to a house further down the road, one with well kept hedges and a plastic flamingo in the middle of the lawn. “We’re going there, by the way.”

Craig wasn’t interested, though, in where they were going.

“What do you mean he reminds you of you? Also, he gives you the heebies?  ”

“Sure. I dunno why but I see some of myself in him. Looking at him is like looking at a fucked up reflection, or like walking with someone and realising once they are gone that they didn’t have a shadow. I don’t know if he _realises_ that yet, but there’s definitely something unusual about him and I always kind of saw that as a threat.”

Craig breathed a sigh of relief to know Kenny wasn’t totally disregarding his concerns.

“Well,” he said, glancing at his reflection in a car vehicle as he passed and being no less underwhelmed than usual by his face. “Do you think it could be related to his whole… you know. Being on drugs thing?”

“He’s not still on drugs.”

“How do you know that?”

Kenny rolled his eyes.

“Maybe he’s still on _prescriptions_.”

They came to a stop outside of the house, and Kenny held a hand up to indicate Craig was to come no further.

“Stay here,” he instructed. “I won’t be a minute.”

Craig stood there on the side of the street, looking at the crispy golden leaves scraping along the gutters, while Kenny went and attended to his business. His mind worked at processing the thoughts he kind of suspected he had about Tweek as he studied them, barely realising that he was likening their colour to the colour of Kenny’s hair.

How did someone like Kenny know so much about Tweek anyway? Craig jumped when his friend reappeared with a handful of small bills (Craig didn’t want to know), and without missing a single beat, he asked him.

“What makes you so sure about him, anyway?”

“Its just a feeling Craig. Don’t take what I say too seriously, I’m biased and I can’t guess for sure what the guy is about, especially if _he_ hardly even understands. Maybe you should ask him. But I am starting to think you might have a type, you know.” He folded his arms and gave Craig a judgemental sort of once over. “You really seem to have a thing for weirdos.”

Craig chose not to take offence at that. He was too pre occupied with thinking that Tweek might already have _told_ him.

_Its hard to be sure if ghosts are ghosts or if I’m just seeing things which are only real in my head._

There was one thing, however of which he was certain.

Last night there had been a moment where he couldn’t see anything but the floodlights. And then, quite without expecting it, Craig had been able to see the sky.


	19. Compensating for being ugly by wearing a hat every day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to have this posted as my birthday present to myself on July 17 but it didn’t pan out.

Craig had never been particularly good at console games.

When he was younger, he was good enough to not be _hideously_ bad, but it had been a good few years since he had played anything other than a Nintendo64 so when he was given the opportunity to be player two in some kind of a racing game he declined – Butters and Jimmy took the controllers instead, and Craig remained where he was, with his elbows and cell phone resting on the top of Token’s glass top coffee table. Although there were seven people in the lounge room that afternoon, spread between two large sofas and a few armchairs, the atmosphere wasn’t too crowded or uncomfortable at all – in fact Craig found it to be rather cosy, and after such a long, long time feeling all boxed in and exhausted it was strange to be in Token’s spotless, open plan house again. Last time he had been here he was _old_ Craig, and he had taken for granted how nice it was. How the windows let in the most wonderful clean light and how Token’s mother had pretty vases of flowers on the mantel, even though his parents worked so hard there was usually no one home to appreciate them.

Craig found himself wondering if he might have a house like this someday, with carpet that looked freshly vacuumed and walls which were cream coloured and plain - no black smudges, dents, or cracks at all.

He jumped when Token sat down next to him at the coffee table and placed a large tumbler of apple juice by his phone.

“Hi stranger.”

“Hey.”

“I didn’t think you’d come. Seeing as you’ve been too good for us lately.”

Craig rolled his eyes and shuffled over, so that Token would have more space to sit next to him. The sofas were mainly occupied by Kenny and Clyde and Bebe, and considering Bebe was here Craig supposed he could understand why Token may think he wouldn’t want to come around, but Kenny had asked and he hadn’t planned anything else to do this afternoon so really, where was the harm in going along? Bebe kept shooting him awkward glances, but Craig couldn’t find it in himself to care. He hoped that Clyde would notice soon, and wrap his hand comfortingly around hers, but for now he was happy to sit and watch Jimmy beat Butters’ ass at car driving. And listen to whatever Token had to say to him too.

He hadn’t had a decent conversation with Token for a while.

“This juice is for me?”  
“Yeah. Thought you could use a cheering up.”

“Why would I need a cheering up?”

Token’s eyes flickered between Craig’s face and the spot Bebe was sitting, watching the videogames on screen and occasionally interjecting in the conversation Kenny was having with Clyde. Craig couldn’t hear properly, but it sounded like it might be about Butters leaving - as far as Craig could tell, his bags would probably be packed by now and ready to go. He would only be gone a few months, but Kenny looked a whole lot like it was going to be the rest of his life. Craig felt very sorry for his friend, and made a note to ask him about it later. ‘How you doing’, ‘are you okay’ - that kind of thing.

“Oh god Token. Not this again.” He checked his phone, (no messages) and slid the device off the table, into his pocket. The floor was an uncomfortable place to sit, thanks to his long legs and bony ass, and trying to get a phone into his pocket while down there was hell, but Craig managed. “I really, really am not bothered. I’m glad for Clyde. You know? It’s about time someone threw him a bone.” Craig dropped his voice, so that only Token could hear him, and his friend gave him a very suspicious look in return.

“Bebe is a really great girl, Craig.”

“I know, but I’m not interested. I never was.”

Token sighed and placed his hands on the table thoughtfully. In the background, Craig heard the sound of the TV and Butters laughing. He wondered if he would have had a chance to beat him, if he had accepted his offer for a game.

“Yeah… I kinda figured after the 4th of July I guess. But uh, do you mind if I ask you something?”

Craig felt the little hairs on his arm prickle uncomfortably.

“Depends what it is?”

“Why? Why weren’t you interested in Bebe? Me and Clyde are pretty sure there’s something going on you aren’t telling us. A crush. A secret internet girlfriend. Something.”

Craig rested his chin in his hand and sighed. He knew it would have to come up sometime, sure. He was at peace with that now he guessed. But for some reason, he really hadn’t thought that it would come up today.

He considered, briefly, just up and telling him - coming clean about his probable bisexuality and that he was currently too busy being attracted to Tweek to give Bebe the time of day, but then he realised that he was too relaxed right now to deal with the consequences. He didn’t want to listen to Clyde yelling _‘No way!”_ and Token claiming _‘I knew it_!”, and he definitely didn’t want Bebe gaping at him after he had so plainly denied having experienced any form of same sex attraction to her face. Add to that the idea that Butters and Kenny would look on in knowing amusement only made the whole incident seem so much worse, and even though Craig knew he would have to tell them somehow, someday, he knew that today was not going to be that day.

It probably wasn’t going to be tomorrow either.

But that was okay.

Instead, he pulled his shoulders into a flippant shrug.

“I like someone else.” He said honestly. “No one you know.”

Token pressed his lips together as though he knew the last part was a lie, and gave Craig a look, like he was peering into his brains and reading the tattoos his thinking had left in them. Craig let him look, reaching for the juice glass and taking a mouthful calmly. He had only just placed the glass back down when Token spoke again.

“You’re an awful liar Craig. But I’m going to let it go.”

“Good.”

“But, you know we are friends right? You can tell me stuff, if you need someone to talk to.”

Craig nodded and informed him that he didn’t need to spell it out for him or anything – he wasn’t an idiot.

“Well, I dunno. Me and Clyde… we miss you is all. It’s like something about you has changed. It’d be great if we could go back to how things were…”

“Things aren’t like they used to be, though. So probably that isn’t going to happen.”

There was a strange sense of nostalgia in saying it, remembering the afternoons playing videogames in this very room. The shallow chatter about girls and assignments and how much everybody hated Eric Cartman. It occurred to Craig that this was his final year at South Park high, and twelve months from now he wouldn’t just be considering how he was going to carry his newfound friendship and feelings into the new school year, but how he was going to carry _himself_ into college, university, the rest of his life.

For some reason, it had never occurred to him in any moving way that he would not be Craig Tucker, living in South Park with his Mom and Dad and Sister, for the rest of his days. The thought made his stomach jolt out of place like he had just taken a sharp drop on a rollercoaster. His grip on the glass of juice he held tightened.

“Okay then.” Token mused carefully. “Similar to how they used to be, then, but better.”

Craig could find no grounds to argue this. Instead, he shrugged again, and pushed his overgrown bangs out of his eyes. He made a note to give his hair a trim over the bathroom sink before school started – never mind whatever it was Tweek had said about haircuts.

“You’re a good friend dude. But I need a lot of space and a lot of peace and quiet. I don’t like being up around you guys all the time.”

“Yeah? Well I’m cool with that, sure. But maybe if you weren’t so high and mighty about it, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

“Hmm. Maybe.”

Craig was starting to wonder if, after spending all his life thinking that _everyone else_ was the dick, he was in fact the person who was the biggest dick of all. It was he, who had gone through his entire life thus far thinking that he was the centre of the universe after all. And it was he who had been so preoccupied with his own selfish fantasies that he never stopped to think about his friends who cared for him, despite their differences in personality, goals and interests. The people he had ignored and dismissed haunted him, they would haunt him forever whenever he looked at Tweek and thought him radiant, and the twinge of guilt and loss he felt when he remembered those wasted years overlooking and underestimating his peers would always be a troublesome cross to bear.

But at least he knew it now, rather than thirty years down the way. Imagine, waking up in his late forties and realising that all the wet dreams he had ever had for Kenny McCormick were based on his fucked up perception of someone else. His lack of empathy. His total blindness to the experiences and feelings of others.

“I will take that on board. But hey, seeing as we are friends and all that, you think you would be willing to give me some advice? It’s top secret.”

Token raised his eyebrows, and understandably so – Craig had never, _ever_ , asked him for advice before. Nonetheless, after glancing around to make sure no one was listening in on their exchange, he nodded.

“I can try?”

“How do I get someone I’m interested in to like me? Is there a trick to it? What do I do?”

Token looked at him for a few seconds in silence, before finally (much to Craig’s annoyance) he started laughing. It wasn’t just a giggle or a snicker either, Token really did start belting out the laughter, and Craig very nearly had to smack him one to get his attention back on subject. His amusement interrupted not only the conversation Clyde and Kenny were having, but it distracted Jimmy enough for Butters to overtake him as well.

“Dude! What the fuck?! Shut up oh my fucking god.”

Flushing, he gave the other boy a sharp shove, and it was only once Craig had been humiliated to the furtherst possible extent, and the nosey parties who had craned their necks in an effort to catch wind of their conversation (Bebe) had looked away, that Token shook his head and waved him away.

“There’s no trick to it or anything. You just have to be yourself and hope they buy it. Of course, you can always invite them over to ‘watch netflix’ or something. Maybe it’s the big house, or the two cars parked outside, but that one _always_ seems to work great for me.”

Craig thought that given his parent’s humble, somewhat unwelcoming lodgings, that probably wouldn’t be all that effective on Tweek.

Unfortunately, as he huffed and told Token a big fat ‘thanks for nothing’, he knew that that was probably the best suggestion or advice he was ever going to get.

 

…

 

Craig couldn’t remember the last time he had someone over.

Well he could, but he had already decided that Kenny didn’t count and when Clyde popped by the other day he hadn’t been expecting it, so he could hardly call _that_ having someone over.

He was pretty sure that Tweek hadn’t been to anyone else’s house for five or so years, and this much was obvious in the way he lingered in the hallway when Craig let him in, looking more awkward than usual in his long black sweater and a scarf that Craig kind of hoped he would take off before he walked into the lounge room. Craig’s father was in there, watching TV, and Craig didn’t want him to take one look at Tweek and make some kind of offensive comment about his appearance.

“Take your shoes off, huh?” he pointed at Tweek’s boots and the rack of shoes his mother maintained by the door. “Mom will make me clean the carpets if they get dirty.”  
“Oh shit, sorry.”

Tweek immediately tried kicking them off, and accidentally knocked a jacket off the coat rack behind him. Craig smiled despite his best efforts to remain cool. Be himself, was what Token said. Stop worrying and be as Craig-y as he possibly could be. But he was caught between being his good old fashioned stone-faced self and letting himself feel _happy_ that Tweek was here, so how was he supposed to not worry about that? He picked up the jacket and nudged him carefully away.

“Never mind. Just go through to the kitchen. Mom is just finishing up now.”

Tweek gave him a nervous smile and Craig’s stomach fluttered.

“I’d rather wait for you, if that’s okay?”

“Well I’m going through now, but sure.”

It  had seemed kind of weird at first, but the more he thought about it the more it seemed quite appropriate, to invite Tweek over for dinner one day after he had finished his afternoon shift. His father had been quite interested to meet his workmate anyway, and Craig had figured that it seemed less… intimate than inviting him around for movies like Token had suggested. God knows how he arrived at that conclusion, however, because now that it was happening he realised that meeting the parents was sort of something that happened to people who were dating. Not people who happened to do the same shift at an all night coffee shop.

All the same, there was something very _right_ about it all, and Craig could feel his chest filling with an unfamiliar pride, knowing that in about twenty seconds his parents and sister were about to set eyes on the person Craig wanted buried six point four inches in his ass. But he wasn’t going to tell them that, now.

Right now he was just going to survive his mothers meat loaf, and make sure that Tweek took his scarf off _before_ he walked into the dining room looking like a spread from a fashion magazine.

The dining room was bright, and his father was already sitting at the head of the table.  His sister was busy setting cutlery down and when Craig walked in he ushered Tweek into a seat next to the one he himself would occupy.

“Ruby, Dad, this is Tweek. Tweek, this is Ruby and my dad.”

His dad nodded, acknowledging them both and giving Tweek a long, critical look that made Craig _certain_ he was going to make some kind of a comment about the length of Tweek’s hair. Ruby stood up straight to stare at him as though she had seen him somewhere before, but was only just figuring that out now.

“ _You’re_ the boy who works at the coffee shop?” she asked in surprise. Tweek nodded and sunk carefully into the chair Craig was offering him.

“You come in often with your friend.” He said shyly, and she nodded.

“She thinks you’re cute.” The forks and knives clattered onto the table when she set them down. “Oh I can’t _wait_ to tell her you’re at my house.”

Tweek’s cheeks turned pink and Craig didn’t know if he should be amused or pissed off.

“Isn’t she only like, ten or something?” he snapped, apparently settling on pissed off.

Ruby shot him a rude hand gesture, which he returned, and his father had to interject before the conflict became hostile.

Grumbling under his breath, Craig sat down, and he hoped Tweek wasn’t _too_ discomforted by how embarrassing his stupid family (and their infantile friends) could be.

It was Craig’s own fault, after all – he had invited him.

The meal itself was okay. His mother made pleasant conversation now and again, and Tweek answered, and his dad went on a few long tirades about the price of vehicle registration. The gaps the clink and clatter of cutlery on plates made Craig feel very aware of how closely he and Tweek were sitting, and how their knees were almost touching under the table, and Craig ached to be able to believe that after this, they would go up to his bedroom and make out or something. He knew that all they were probably going to do was talk, though. And he supposed that that was okay too.

It was halfway through dessert that his father said something embarrassing, and for a single terrible moment Craig thought that Tweek was going to panic and ruin everything.

“So. Tweek. Do you have a girlfriend right now?”

Tweek choked on the wafer biscuit he was nibbling tentatively (what kind of food did they eat at trhe tweak household anyway? When they had sat down to start eating Tweek had looked at the food like he had never seen boiled cabbage before) and his fork clattered down onto his dinner plate with no grace or composure whatsoever.

“Sorry, what?”

“Girlfriend. You’ve got a girlfriend?”

Tweek’s cheeks turned a fragile, rosey pink and he shook his head.

“Uhh… No? I mean… Why? Am I supposed to?”

Clearly discomforted, he looked to Craig for guidance, and Craig’s mother beside him coughed discretely. Sensing weakness his father immediately honed in.

“No girlfriend, eh? You Tweak’s are interesting people. Your father’s a bit light in the loafers too I reckon.”

“ _Dad_!”

Craig was mortified. His father’s low-key discomfort with anyone who didn’t play sports and linger in pubs talking about women was typical off most of the men in this town, but it had never been as glaringly obvious to Craig as it was right now. Craig knew as well as anyone else that when it came to parents, there were things which could be overlooked or forgiven, but when those things found themselves displayed to strangers and guests Craig didn’t think he could ignore them any longer.

“What? I’m keeping the conversation flowing here.”

“No you aren’t! You’re embarrassing me!”

He glanced at Tweek, who seemed unable to decide if he should be more shocked by Craig’s dad’s question, or Craig’s response to it being posed in the first place.

“Uh… what? What’s the question? Is he asking if…”

“Don’t answer him Tweek. Jesus _fucking_ Christ this family.” Craig stabbed his ice cream lump viciously with his spoon and glared at his father with venom. “You want to know why I don’t have friends around, Dad? This is why.”

They finished the meal wordlessly, and when Craig’s mom offered everyone tea or coffee Craig turned it down for both Tweek and himself. He figured the sooner they escaped from the scrutiny of his family the better.

 

…

 

“So this is it?”

Tweek sat in the desk chair, at the desk Craig had cleaned a few days earlier, and looked at all the features of Craig’s bedroom. Craig saw him look at the unmade bed, and the closet crammed with all the stuff he hadn’t managed to clear before he came over, and the other little details that betrayed facets of his personality. More than a little nervous, Craig sat down with his back against the headboard, and pointed to the large guinea pig cage on his desk.

“Mojo and Donnie.” He said, and Tweek spun around in his chair to peek at them rustling the hay in their bed box.

“Woah. They are bigger than I thought?”

“They are both very fat and very friendly. You can pat one if you like.”

At the sound of his voice, both of them started chirping, and the sound seemed to give Tweek a startle.

“Uh… no. Thanks? I mean… sometime but not now. I uh…”

He gave the cage a nervous look and wheeled the chair discretely away. Craig had to try not to laugh at him.

“They don’t bite.” He assured him, and Tweek raised his eyebrows.

“I believe you.”

“I’m serious. They are nicer than my parents. Sorry about my Dad, by the way.”

He tried to make it sound casual, but he was unpleasantly aware of the way that last bit sounded tacked on and kind of desperate. Tweek’s eyes fluttered briefly before his whole lovely face broke into a smile.

“Don’t worry about it. I get it a lot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

For some reason, that didn’t make Craig feel any better. He sighed and pushed his hat off his head. It fell limply onto the mattress beside him.

“Okay. Well then… sorry about my Mom’s cooking.”

And this time, Tweek’s dismissal was a lot less genuine.

“Oh… it’s all right.”

Craig’s lips curved upwards in amusement.

“Never had meat loaf before?” he asked. Tweek shook his head.

“My mom usually cooks… you know. Bouillabaisse. Fish and salads and bread and stuff.”

“No veges?”

“Well, yeah. But quiches… eggplants.” He wiggled in his seat and Craig nodded.

“Rich people food.”

“Café food.” He ran his fingers along the edge of Craig’s desk and sighed. “Also, I don’t want to sound crazy or anything, but I kind of get nervous when I have to eat food at other people’s places.”

Craig should have been able to guess that one.

He shrugged and patted the far end of the bed with his foot.

“I hate meatloaf.” He confided. “And your mother makes the best muffins, so I get that. Come sit with me.”

Tweek looked at the end of the bed and the pile of duvets Craig had at the end. He sniggered.

“Want me to fix those for you?”

“If you want.”

Tweek must not have wanted to that badly. He moved over and sat down without even smoothing the sheets, and Craig liked the sound the springs made as his weight came onto the mattress. He sounded heavier than Kenny did, when they lay here together that night, and his height made him look awkward perched there, about to fall off. Craig watched him tug his socks up, and adjust his cardigan, but then he hesitated and Craig could see he was thinking very hard about it for some reason.

“It’s warm in here...” He commented mildly, and Craig nodded.

“Just chuck it on the floor.”

Tweek pulled off his cardigan, and did exactly that. Underneath, he was wearing a pale grey v-neck tee, and for some reason Craig found this devastatingly attractive.

“… wow okay.” he studied fading bruises on his friends biceps, and his forearms which were of that wonderful, masculine shape Craig loved, and Tweek’s mouth twitched into a smile. He backed against the wall and leant there as if unsure he should place his entire weight against it.

“What?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

Craig directed his gaze at the ceiling, with which he was already familiar, and sighed.

This was proving less cosy than he thought it might be. His dinner was sitting heavy in his belly and he had to bend his legs up in order to make room for Tweek on the end of his bed. He thought it would be easy, to carry a conversation up here, but it wasn’t. The room was small, and it smothered Craig’s ability to chat. He never noticed so much with Kenny, because Kenny was small too. Tweek took up a lot of space, and embarrassingly for Craig there weren’t many other places to look at besides straight at him – this wouldn’t have been such a problem if Craig hadn’t found him so beautiful.  

“… You know dude, if you told me at the start of summer I would end up at your house eating dinner with your parents I would have thought you were taking the piss out of me.”

Tweek surprised him, expressing his thoughts aloud, and Craig felt his belly flutter as he watched his friend pick at his cuticles.

“It’s been a weird summer.”

“Oh man, no kidding.” Tweek laughed in a way that gave Craig the notion he was talking about something weird of his own that Craig was not privy to. His very own personal summertime transformation. What could it be? Craig didn’t know. He couldn’t see any change in him further than the change which resulted from his own shift in perception, and a stirring of curiosity made him shuffle around against his pillow. Should he ask? Should he leave it be? Was Tweek _inviting_ him to ask, with the private little smile and the easy way his shoulders sloped like he was _comfortable_. Something Craig hadn’t realised Tweek was capable of being, before the holiday started.

“I feel a lot older than I did last summer.” Craig decided to talk about himself a little more, in the hopes Tweek would respond to his openness in kind. He couldn’t divulge too much, however, in case he let slip something he needed to keep private. “Not just in that whole ‘baby’s first chest hair’ kind of a way either.”

“You mean you feel _emotionally_ older.” Tweek clarified, and Craig nodded.

“Sure. Kinda. I guess. I dunno. What even is that anyway?”

“Hm. Well if it makes you feel any better I think I feel a little older too. More like… myself than I used to. Maybe that’s because I changed all my pills. Also, I uh…” he chewed his bottom lip thoughtfully, and Craig recalled how he looked when he was smoking. The way he touched his fingers against his mouth. The shapes his lips made when he said Craig’s name.

“You what?”

“I dunno. Nevermind.”

He backed down and Craig grit his teeth in frustration. His curiosity had been piqued now, and it was making the skin on his neck prickle like crazy. A non-specific sense that there was something Tweek was edging around, but not confident enough to bring up, was growing, and  it appealed to him a whole lot because the idea that Tweek too had had a life changing summer made Craig feel a little less alone than he thought he had been two weeks ago. Or a month ago. Or in May, when their lives had yet to touch.

“… I told Kenny I liked him this summer.” Craig tried again, figuring that if he didn’t plough ahead with this, neither of them would.  It wasn’t _really_ accurate, but it was true enough. A simplification for the purposes of downplaying how emotionally exhausting the whole incident had been. “I had a crush on him for like… five years. And I finally told him. So that was pretty life changing I guess.”

Tweek raised his eyebrows and glanced at him sideways. A shiver ran down Craig’s back like he was being seen _into_ , like Tweek was peeling back his skin and his muscles and reading the rings on his bones.

“Five years?”

Craig nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Well, first he made out with me, and then he turned me down flat.”

“… He what?”

Craig shrugged like it didn’t matter. It didn’t now, he thought to himself. It didn’t matter. That was just Kenny, and he should have expected it from the beginning.

“I’m over it.” he insisted. Tweek looked at him like he didn’t believe it, but he left the subject alone when he said

“Well, I figured out how to blow light bulbs with my mind and started to see shadow people, if that counts?”

Craig chalked this up to Tweek making some kind of dry joke.

He ran with it.

“Seems the only thing you missed out on was some kind of summer romance.”

Tweek cocked his head and ran his nails up the length of his forearm. His brows were furrowed in a way that made Craig uneasy, and for a single unpleasant moment Craig thought Tweek was going to tell him he wasn’t joking. He _was_ joking, right? Tweek was weird, but not that weird. Maybe he was slipping back into that strange and unimpenetrable bubble of insanity that characterised him in the high school halls? Craig didn’t think he was ready to deal with that. Not now, that he had realised a unrelenting and unquestionable affection for the guy.

Fortunately, he didn’t argue his comment, letting his eyes drop and continuing to scratch white lines over the surface of his skin.

“There’s still a week of summer vacation left, you know.”

“Yeah, but you’re going to have to move quickly. For the record, summer romances aren’t al they are cracked up to be. Ask Bebe.”

“Or I could ask you.”

“You wouldn’t. That’s too much pressure.”

Tweek stared at him in surprise, and Craig had just enough time to wonder if he had accidentally crossed a line (he had been aiming for ‘witty banter’, but in retrospect that could have been interpreted as a cruel jibe) before he sniffed and hunched his shoulders into a shrug.

“I have to learn to handle pressure sometime though, right? I have to face my fears, and start taking responsibility for who I am. _What_ I am.”

“… A person?”

Craig was rightly confused by this phrasing.

“Yes but what _kind_ of person? Someone who does real, normal person things? Someone who has thoughts and ideas and feelings, which aren’t entirely the result of pills and anxieties and stuff like that? Someone who can tell the truth about things, even if its just to _one_ friend, because they know that their head and their heart isn’t big enough to hold it all inside.”

“Uh… okay?” Craig wasn’t sure where he was going with this. “I thought you did tell me the truth about things. You know. The late night chats, the talking about your treatment, the sex thing…”

“Yeah, but that’s all little stuff right? Its stuff I decided I wanted to let you see. But there’s so much stuff I _didn’t_ tell you too. About the lights in the sky at dawn that spell words I’ve never heard before, and the way a cup of milk boils in my hands when I think of the future, and mostly how I lie awake at night thinking about how the random and uncaring universe we live in sent me _you._ Right here and now, it’s me and you and I don’t know why that is. It terrifies me.”

Craig’s heart did a funny little spasm in his chest, and he wiggled in his spot nervously, because he knew the feeling so, so well that he wondered if it was written all over his face.

“I guess… that’s just lucky isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Maybe. But then, if I think about it a little more, I realise that there are things you never told me about too. And for some reason that really bothers me. I mean what about _Kenny_? Seriously? Jesus Christ why would you go for Kenny?”

There wasn’t, however, any more of an answer to that question now than there ever had been before.

“I dunno.” Craig shrugged, and leaned back against the head board behind his bed. “He was an easy choice. Nice to look at, shallow and far away. And I guess I just wanted somewhere to direct my attention. I’m not denying my past self was an idiot.”

“Hm.” Tweek did not look all that comforted. “and you kissed?”

“Yeah. A couple of times. I mean, we could have fucked around a bit too if I really wanted, but I guess it just never happened.”

And Craig had found someone else he would rather fuck around with besides.

“Was he… you know. Good?”                                                                                                   

“Why do you care? He was okay. No fireworks.”

Tweek looked at him hard, and behind ocean green eyes Craig could see his mind working, his thoughts falling into order and a shadow of envy throwing glitter deep into the void of his pupils as he slowly started to figure him out. Human attachment, human intimacy, were all most likely experiences Tweek had only read about and seen in movies until now. Craig remembered when he had that same naivety, that slick-palm heart-racing fear of being confronted with the very real, very tangible unknown.

“It _is_ meant to be like fireworks then, when you kiss someone you really, really like?”

“No. Probably not. I mean it’s a nice idea, but in my experience an average kiss is actually less desirable than no kiss at all.”

For someone who was by no accounts a virgin, Tweek was very innocent in his knowledge of what real kisses felt like.

“God, that’s a pretty harsh thing to say.”

“I dunno. It’s true.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Craig rolled his eyes and scoffed.

“Ohkay. Ohkay. Seeing as you’re so sure about it, why don’t you try it out?”

Despite inviting him to do so, however, he was startled when Tweek sat up and closed in on him very quickly. His immediate instinct was to jump and push him away, but somewhere along the lines he forgot he had intended to do that – his hands came to curl against a soft cotton t-shirt instead, his head pressed back against the wall, and his nose and mouth and chest were all full of the scent of aftershave and coffee and faded cigarettes.

He was kissing him.

Tweek was kissing him.

And he tried and tried and tried to make sense of it, but his mind was filled with static like snowfall on a broken TV set and his whole body was burning hot and shivering cold simultaneously. There was no time, no place, no meaning. Just the smell of him and the taste of him and his _warmth._

Craig let his eyes fall shut, and watched the fireworks illuminate the darkest, most long forgotten recesses of his mind.


	20. The backstreet boys greatest hits CD getting jammed in your moms CD player so every time she turns on the car radio the backstreet boys is all that plays.

Craig got up at nine am two days later and for the first time in recorded history, he stood in front of his chest of drawers for ten whole minutes trying to figure out what to wear.

He considered wearing his usual hoodie and jeans combination, but then realised that he didn’t actually _have_ a clean hoodie on hand, and all of his sweaters (a grand total of two) were nerdy as fuck and probably not worth even considering putting on. He rummaged around in the back of his closet, found nothing but a pair of grey jeans he didn’t even know he had and a pair of old gym trainers he should have binned years ago, and eventually found himself sifting through the pile of clothing he kept on the back of his desk chair because it was the stuff he wore over and over and over again. Three pairs of pants and some plain black T-shirts constituted the selection - Hardly inspiring or particularly great but it was better than going out wearing nothing – and after some deliberation and asking Donnie what _he_ thought (Which was nothing. At least not specifically pertinent to Craig’s wardrobe anyway) he settled on the black and grey raglan he wore pretty much every day of his life. He figured it looked nicer than usual if he wore it with his _good_ jeans though, and after standing in front of the bathroom mirror taking his hat on and off then on again for a good quarter of an hour he decided that he might try leaving the house without it today. Provided he could find a hairbrush that is.

“… Ruby?”

Craig was hesitant, and with good reason, to knock on his younger sisters door. He hoped she would be awake already, because otherwise she was going to go _right off_ at him for disturbing her rest, but when after a stretch of thirty seconds there came no angry yelling or loud foot stomping he decided she must not be there, and figured he might as well just return to the bathroom and brush his teeth instead. He was halfway back down the hall when he heard a door creaking open, and Ruby poked her head out in the usual irritated way preteen girls tended to do when they were dealing with older male siblings.

“What do you want?”

“Oh. Uh, I was just wondering if you had a comb or something I could borrow. Or some shit I could put in my hair to make it less…”

“Hideous?” she narrowed her eyes and gave him a dry once over. She certainly _seemed_ awake, but she was still wearing the adventure time sleep shirt she had gotten for her birthday a few months previous.

“Yeah.” He decided he didn’t want to argue about this today, and checked his watch to make sure he wasn’t running late or anything. He still had an hour before he met Tweek at eleven by the bus stop. “Sure. Anything you have would be great.”

She sniffed and pushed open her door completely, leaning on the frame and folding her arms across her chest like Craig’s request was very suspicious, and she wanted to be privy to whatever bizarre chain of events that had caused it.

“Are you sick?” she asked rudely, tossing her hair off her face. “You look like the ugly guy from one direction today and its grossing me out.”

“Oh fucking hell.” Craig rolled his eyes and crossed his arms across his chest self consciously. What was that even supposed to _mean_? Weren’t all the guys in one direction supposed to be attractive or something? He didn’t much like being compared to a gaggle of men primped and groomed to appeal to a youthful female audience, even if he was being compared to the least attractive of all of them. This was hardly news to Craig anyway, who was already very familiar with how bland he was aesthetically. “Sorry I even asked.”

“No, no.” she stood up straight and shook her head. “It’s okay. I can give you a comb sure. And some dry shampoo for your hair. Wait here a second.”

She disappeared back into her room ad closed the door. Craig was left standing there in the hallway feeling a little bit disorientated and confused. Did she say _dry shampoo_?

Ruby returned in a few seconds with a cheep plastic comb that looked like it might have come with a magazine, and a can of something that looked like shaving foam, but made a noise like air freshener did when Craig shook it. He pulled off the lid and gave it a sniff – it was floral and powdery, just like the pink roses on the can promised.

“How do I use this?” he asked. Ruby smiled as though she was looking down on him.

“You spray it in your hair and then comb it through to get rid of all the greasiness. Which is just what you need, I think. Don’t spray in too much because it will make you look grey. Oops, I meant grey _er._ Sorry.” She stepped back from her door and slammed it in her wake, leaving Craig standing there holding a comb and a can of alleged dry shampoo, no closer to knowing how to use these devices than he had been before he had procured them.

Today, however, was supposed to be a day of firsts. So he was going to bust his ass trying to work out how to use them, even if the effort ultimately killed him.

 

…

 

Tweek was standing at the bus stop looking utterly ordinary, in jeans and a black t-shirt with a neckline so stretched out it looked like he had been shoving watermelons through it on a regular basis, so Craig felt a little less stupid for not putting more effort into his clothing on this, his first real date with someone he _wanted_ to go on a date with. So not Bebe. Tweek.

Tweek had tied his bangs up off his face, and he had even made the effort to get some sleep the night before - when he saw Craig approaching he smiled and hunched his shoulders up shyly around his ears.

“I uh… I was kind of early.”

“No problem. I was late.”

Craig dug around in his pockets for the change he had found down the back of the sofa prior to coming, and held it out to his company like he was expecting him to inspect it or something. Make sure it was up to standard. Whatever.

“I don’t take the bus much.” He said.

“Neither do I, but my parents are at the shop so they can’t drive us.” Tweek pulled a handful of change out of his own pocket, and a crumpled five dollar bill. “I can pay for you.”

“No. No way. Fuck off.”

“God, okay.” His eyebrows crept up and he gave Craig a brief once over glance. “I was going to say that I like your shirt, but forget it now.”

Craig flushed and looked at him like he was crazy.

“This is the same shirt I always wear.” He said.

“Yeah? And I like it.”

Oh god.

Craig wasn’t sure he could survive this date without collapsing. Frankly, he still couldn’t believe it was happening. The two of them stood in nervous silence side by side, and Craig wondered if Tweek’s nerves were as tingling as his were. Possibly more so. He seemed pretty calm, but then again he was very good at faking ‘calm’ so maybe inside his guts were doing gymnastics.

When the bus rounded the corner and Tweek dropped all his money in surprise, Craig got his answer.

“Jumpier than usual?”

Tweek gave him an embarrassed kind of a look, and scooped his change up off the sidewalk.

“Sorry ‘bout it. This is kinda a lot of pressure, Craig.”

“It’s okay. I’m nervous too.” Craig bent down and picked up the five dollar bill, which had been buffered against his shoe by the crisp morning breeze. “I mean, what’s the difference between a date and just hanging out? I feel like there is one but I don’t know how to spot it?”

The bus slowed to a crawl in front of them, and the doors hissed open as it came to a stop. Despite declining his offer to pay earlier, Craig passed the bill straight to the driver and received his change without even asking. When Tweek’s jaw dropped in surprise, Craig brushed him off and ushered him onto the bus.

“I will pay you back.” He promised. “I just didn’t want to stand there haggling like an idiot in front of the bus driver.”

The bus driver, however, didn’t look like he would have cared all that much.

They sat close to the back, on the elevated seats behind the panel of protective glass, and Craig took the window seat out of habit but obviously, Tweek didn’t really mind. There were two or three people on the bus, none of whom paid them any attention, and as Tweek sat next to him and their thighs pressed together innocently. Craig felt his skin prickle and he wondered if Tweek was going to kiss him again. If it would be hard this time, and heady, or if it would be with that same slow tenderness that brought cold beads of sweat to his back.

He touched his mouth absently, remembering the ghost of pressure there, as the bus lurched forward and took off.

“I haven’t been to the mall in years.” Tweek mused aloud. “I’m really anxious. What if someone tries to give me a flyer? Do the Krishna people still hag out in front of foot locker selling those books?”

“It’s okay.” Craig hid his smile behind his fingertips. “If you get scared you can hold my hand.”

This made Tweek flush and laugh awkwardly, and Craig knew a mighty tickle of delight in his chest when the other boy had to look away.

He liked him. Craig couldn’t believe it. Tweek _liked_ him. And it wasn’t a cruel joke either. How could it be? Craig was almost convinced that Tweek didn’t have an unkind bone in his body. What Craig had done in his life to deserve such good fortune he could not imagine, but he adored himself for it.

He wanted to ask though, he really did want to know. Because although he was overwhelmed with excitement he had to admit that deep down, sitting next to Tweek he just felt so _plain_. So boring and kind of sad - what on earth did Tweek see in him? Maybe the glow of that first life changing kiss was starting to wear off, and the exhilarating joy that had kept him awake and squirming around on his mattress all of the two nights before was starting to fade. After all, it was only going to be a little while before Tweek realised that Craig was a moody and unkind person, and ditch him for someone nicer. Someone good looking. Someone more like the person Tweek deserved…

“You okay?”

Craig jumped when Tweek bumped their shoulders together, and he pulled his gaze away from the skyline which looked heavy with clouds of a graphite kind of grey. It was warm on the bus, although outside it was cold, and Craig sighed wearily, pushing his hand through his hair.

“Yeah. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

He screwed his nose up, unsure if he wanted to address these unsubstantiated fears this early into their courtship.

“Going back to school.”

“Oh… I don’t like to think about that.” Tweek wiggled in his bus seat and Craig thought he saw a flicker of his own fears reflected in his eyes. Will they still talk to each other in September? Maybe this whole thing, this feeling of joy that comes from his body warmth next to Craig’s was just a pipe dream after all? Maybe soon, everything will be back to normal, and by Christmas Tweek will be holding hands with a pretty girl – the kind with paper roses braided into turquoise hair.

“Summer never lasts.” Craig told him.

“I always liked winter better anyway.” He fiddled with the ends of his hair and sighed. “Hot coffee weather.”

Craig should have been able to guess that one. He smiled sadly and leant his shoulder against the chilly bus window.

“Hold my hand?” he asked, turning his palm upwards and offering it to Tweek. “I’m scared.”

Tweek didn’t ask him what he was scared of, and he was thankful.

Instead he laced their fingers together carefully, and his hands were warm, and a little rough, and the touch made Craig turn hot then cold then hot again. He forgot about the summer ending, and he forgot about the little things that made him scared that Tweek might not like him much longer. Instead he concentrated on the way his skin felt hyper-sensitive, the way his legs felt like cotton wool and how the contact echoed dully in his lower belly.

He hoped this longing, this quiet ecstasy, this closeness, went on forever. 

 

…

 

 The first place they went to was Harbucks coffee – the store had been relocated to the mall seven years previous, and it had been doing swell business ever since. That didn’t mean that there was no more love lost between Tweek’s parents and the place, however, and when Tweek spotted the logo on the mall plan map Craig raised his eyebrows in surprise, but didn’t say anything until his company had paid seven dollars for a venti quad shot cappuccino.

“You sure you should be giving them your hard earned tips?”

“Just promise you won’t tell my dad. Did you want something?

Craig told him he would get a coke at the lotto shop opposite hot topic, or wherever else that may take his fancy as they wandered around and looked through shop front windows in morbid curiosity.

This store sold strapless bras.

This store sold stainless steel fruit platters for sixty dollars a piece.   
This store sold objects that looked like lamps but when you took the lampshade off the top it was actually a knife.

Craig spent three minutes standing in front of the apple store looking at the Mac Books on offer, before Tweek coughed quietly and said he wanted to keep moving, because the security guard next to the t-shirt stand had been looking at them suspiciously for ages.

“Sorry, I need a new computer is all.”

“Been saving your paychecks?”

“Yeah, actually. I haven’t checked my account but I must have saved a shit ton.”

“Ahhhhh.” Tweek smiled and pushed Craig carefully away from the window, like he wanted to be cool and calm about it but underneath he was ready to start screaming and run should that security guy so much as cough at them. “I can’t save money. I get paranoid that if I have too much in my account someone will try and steal it.”

“So what do you do with your tips and stuff?”

“I buy coffee and pay for my meds and with anything extra I usually get books and fancy aftershave on the internet. Dumb right?”

Craig didn’t think that was _that_ dumb. Although it was strange that Tweek never saved any of his money. He glanced at Tweek’s skin and hair and thought that as far as reckless money spending went, though, personal care items and books were probably wise investments.

“You have nice skin.” He commented, as they passed by a large group of kids Craig recognised as belonging to the year below them. “But lots of bruises.”

“Mmm… I’m clumsy and I take too much aspirin. Maybe if I slept better I wouldn’t get so many headaches, and I wouldn’t need to take so much. But here we are.”

He glanced briefly over his shoulder, at the security guard who had moved on to stare at the gaggle of youths moving toward him.

Craig shrugged. He wasn’t a doctor or anything, so he didn’t feel like saying anything about it. He liked Tweek as he was, bruised and wired and sleepless.

“You have anywhere particular you want to go?”

They had almost done a whole circuit off the mall, and had yet to spot anything that would be suitable entertainment for either of them.

“Not really?”

“Well then do you want to go see a movie instead?” Craig checked his watch, saw it was almost 11am, and figured there was still plenty of time for them to catch a mid morning showing. “There must still be something on. There weren’t many good movies this summer…”

“Yeah sure. A movie would be great, actually. I kind of want to get out of here, anyway…”

Craig was starting to get the impression that Tweek didn’t like being stared at in public. And being as tall as he was, with hair like his, it was kind of difficult for him to avoid it. Mothers with their hands clamped tightly around their children’s sticky mitts, and elderly men with military haircuts kept sending him dirty looks, and the hardly discreet preteen girls who were whispering behind their hands when they saw him made Craig feel kind of antsy. Like he could happily have fought them all, if they wanted to try and take him out from under his nose.

Perfectly enough, there was a decidedly terrible looking horror flick being screened, and although Craig remembered how high Tweek had jumped when they watched a _familiar_ spooky movie at his own _house_ , Tweek didn’t protest or even falter about deciding to watch it. Craig was halfway proud of him for that, and when they filed into the cinema he seemed as lucid and relaxed as ever.

“Not nervous?” he asked. Tweek waved him off, dropping down in their assigned seats close to the middle at the back.

“A little, but not too bad. Are you?”

Craig smiled and sat next to him, and even though the lights were low wile the movie was as yet unstarted, he thought Tweek would be able to read enough into his expression to understand.

He was nervous, but not about the movie so much as being intimately close with Tweek in a darkened space. Were they going to make out? Was Tweek going to bring out the patented yawning stretch or was Craig going to have to initiate that move himself? He felt almost like he was floating in his seat when he sat down in it, but he kept himself together enough to pull his phone out of his ass pocket and turn it off.

“Nope. The hand- holding offer is still open, if you do get scared.”

“Yeah I know. But I’m not _that_ bad about it am I?”

Craig didn’t want to say yes, but he felt like Tweek told himself anyway when he didn’t even make it to the title card. The high tension opening sequence had him tense and groping for Craig’s hand blindly in the dark, and Craig would have found it embarrassing if he didn’t find it so helplessly sweet. Not because Craig enjoyed seeing him wound up or anything, but rather because it was just so _Tweek_ to be affected by it - That was just the kind of person he was. Craig _liked_ the person Tweek was; he liked pretty much everything about him thus far. He liked his smile, and his laugh, and the expressions he made when he was pissed or worried or contented. Craig liked the way his fingers felt, clamped between his own, and the smell of him. The warmth of him. The way his touch sent wobbly sensations down his back and made his heart feel light like he was full of helium. Craig squeezed his hand back and pressed closer.

“You’re pretty bad.” He whispered, when the titles started rolling, and Tweek whined quietly in frustration.

“But you do know I’m trying right?”

“Of course! But I don’t mind. Seriously. It’s cool. We are cool.”

Someone three rows ahead of them shushed loudly, and although Tweek seemed discomforted to receive a scolding Craig flipped him off in the dark and thought nothing else of it.

They made it about twenty minutes through before Craig realised he couldn’t sit still. Not only was the movie boring and full off clichés, he was starting to feel an awful lot like Tweek’s closeness was distracting him from the plot. At first it had been expected, the focus on his hand and their arms pressed together an exciting novelty, but over the passage of time it hadn’t gone away. Instead, it felt like it was getting _worse._ His leg started jiggling. Then he started biting his fingernails. Then his squirming seemed to distract Tweek too, because his date tightened his grip on his hand questioningly, running his thumb over the back of Craig’s knuckles.

That was the final straw.

Craig groaned softly and slid down low in his seat.

“Tweek.”

“Mmm?”

Tweek didn’t pull his eyes from the screen. The pictures were reflected in silver on his wide eyes and the contours of his face looked so beautiful traced in light and shadows. Craig wasn’t sure if he should find it endearing or insulting, that he was so absorbed in the picture he was watching instead of Craig.

“Tweek I cant concentrate.”

“How come?”

“Because… because I just…”

This time, the guy three rows ahead turned around to glare at them, and Craig could happily have punched him.

_“Would you two kids shut up!”_

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

What was he supposed to do? Just as he had on the bus that morning, he felt himself wonder if Tweek was just as worked up about this as he was. If Tweek was just as flustered, and scared, and excitable, or if he wasn’t that bothered by the whole scenario. The darkness seemed to amplify his awareness. The tension in the movie soundtrack was the same as the tension in his muscles. Was this as close as they were ever going to get? Was Craig going to look back on this by November and wish he had been able to take it further? Right now he felt kind of like he had been boxed in by his own worry, and he really did not care for it at all.  

“Sorry.” Tweek whispered back at their heckler, and Craig thought he imagined his cheeks turning darker in embarrassment.

“Don’t apologise to him.” Craig insisted under his breath. “The fuckin dick.”

“Shush Craig, we’re supposed to be watching?”

“There are plenty of other places he could sit.”

“Yeah, or you could shut up.”

“What, you gunna make me?”

Oh god.

Did he actually say that?

Tweek turned his face toward him in shock and stared, like he had only just realised who he had unwittingly invited on a date. Craig tried to look like he hadn’t just stuck his foot twenty seven inches down his throat.

“I mean, right. Sorry. I’m gunna just go ahead and-“

Tweek cut him off before he could finish his sentence.

The hands which seized his face were clumsy and unpractised, and the way he kissed was too wet and too hard and too heavy and different from the measured, hesitant way he had kissed him a few days before. All the same, when he pulled away Craig found he didn’t have any breath left, and his head was swimming with blurry silver and the thrum of the soundtrack playing in the background. It was hard to make out Tweek’s expression in the dark, and hard to detect what he was supposed to do in response to that.

“ _I think I want to kiss you right now.”_

 For a few seconds he just sat there, mulling over those breathy words and feeling numb and dizzy. If it wasn’t for the way Tweek’s fingers brushed along the side of his jaw Craig might just have sat back and thought about it all a little longer.

But that touch was so tender, and so promising, and so sweet – he let himself melt into another kiss, and then another one, and soon he forgot about the movie and the pissy guy three rows ahead. He forgot about everything, and lost himself, and if Tweek hadn’t pushed him gently away when the credits started he would have happily stayed there forever making out with him. mapping the terrain of his tongue and his lips and his teeth.

“Good movie?” Tweek asked him carefully, as the lights were raised, and his hair was mussed. His lips wet and full.

Craig said it was the best fucking picture he’d ever seen.

 

…

 

The firsts kept happening, even after the day of Craig’s date had come and gone – at ten am on Sunday, Craig was doing a basket of laundry when his phone went off, and thinking it might have been Tweek he dropped everything to yank it out of his pocket. The laundry powder spilled onto the floor and his basket of socks and underwear teetered precariously on the edge of the top loader as he checked the message, and he didn’t bother to notice that when he wandered out of the laundry room in confusion soap powder was stickying the bottom of his knitted slippers.

The message wasn’t from Tweek, it was from Kenny. But that wasn’t surprising in itself. It was surprising in the fact that Kenny was texting to ask if Craig could go _over_. To his house to see him.

Kenny had never ever ever ever ever invited Craig to his house for the express purpose of seeing him, and suspicious of his motivations Craig lingered in the kitchen for a moment wondering if he should ask his sister for a second opinion.

That was weird, right? Or was it normal?

Craig was of the opinion that whatever constituted ‘normal’ didn’t really apply to Kenny though anyway. He had just about made up his mind to suggest he come over _here_ instead, when his mother coughed quietly and Craig realised that he was, in fact, not alone in the room.

“Is there a reason you’re hovering around the middle of the kitchen right now?”

He glanced up, observed that his mother was at the  table with a sewing machine and a large half sewn quilt, and shook his head.

“No. I’m actually about to head out.”

He grabbed a can of diet coke from the fridge and hurried into the foyer, before she could request his assistance in measuring brightly coloured off cuts and hand sewing hems on the base sheet.

He text back an affirmative, and within thirty seconds he was out the door.

His whole walk over, he pondered what it was Kenny could possibly want, but when he arrived he didn’t have to wait that long for an answer.

“Hey Craig.” Kenny yanked open the door and was pushing outside before Craig could even knock on it. “let’s get out of here. I want to go for a walk in the forest or something.”

Craig frowned and looked at the sky overhead. It was overcast, but the cloud cover looked thin in patches so that parts of the sky glowed blinding silver. It seemed unlikely to rain, but the absence of sun meant it was probably going to be cold and gloomy down the train tracks, where the foot of the mountain ranges that limned the town inched into the fur trees, and the rocky goat roads up to the peaks.

“That’s kind of out of the way dude.”

“I know.” He gestured toward his house, and Craig instantly understood that Kenny’s family were probably in there, watching television or drinking beer or whatever it was they did when they were home. “I don’t want… you know. It’s secret.”

He tugged on the large black coat he had in his hands, hiding the plain grey t-shirt he was wearing, and it all made perfect sense quite suddenly.

_It’s about Butters._

Craig narrowed his eyes and glanced behind him to the parched McCormick lawn and the empty street. The house opposite Kenny’s looked even more dilapidated than his did- there was a black garbage bag instead of glass in the front door window  of the place.  There was no-one there to hear them, or see them, unless the neighbours were inching apart the slats of their blinds and peeking at them standing on the doorstep, but still Craig felt as though any talk about butters would probably be best conducted far out of earshot of this place.

He wasn’t sure exactly, how Kenny’s family and neighbours might have felt about whatever the fuck Kenny had going on with Butters, but it was probably poorly – it made sense that he wouldn’t ant anyone overhearing their conversation.

Craig stepped back and let Kenny lead the way down the stairs and across the lawn again, and by the time he reached the footpath he was striding so fast Craig had to jog a little to keep up.

“You’re not taking me down here so you can kill me and abandon the body?”

Kenny laughed dryly, but kept walking. He obviously wasn’t in a pleasant mood. Craig found it difficult to keep up with him, having to jump almost from sleeper to sleeper on feet which weren’t so nimble to void tripping over rocks and clumps of long yellowed grass. Eventually, they broke away from the town, and started heading in the direction of the northernmost mountain pass. It was only once they passed under the shadows of the fur trees around the base of the mountains that Kenny stopped walking, and he lingered there, gazing further down the tracks to the place they disappeared into the forest, as though he was longing to just keep going and never turn back.

Craig frowned and turned around to look where they had just come from. There was not much to see – even three minutes walk from the town, he felt isolated out here, and with Kenny completely alone. A breeze rustled the leaves overhead and in the distance, birds were chirping, but right in this clear spot where the train tracks lay sleeping, there was silence except for his own breathing and the should of Kenny sighing, and sitting down.

“… you cant sit there.” Craig told him carefully, unnerved to see he was sitting cross legged in the middle of the tracks.  “What if a train comes?”

“Then I die I guess. Nothing special. I just need to sit down for a moment. Gotta think.”

“... About what?” Craig sat down a few metres away, at the edge of the ballast where the wet grass and dust made the cuffs of his jeans a little damp. He thought he already knew.

“About Butters.”

Craig nodded, and suppressed the completely irrational and illogical urge to gush to him about what had happened with Tweek recently. About the movie, and the way his hair felt between Craig’s fingers, and how last night they had spent hours making out in the booth at Tweek bros coffee shop instead of working. There would be time to talk about that later, surely. Right now, it was clear that Kenny needed his advice.

“What has he done now?”

“Well, nothing. It’s that whole him going away thing. I’m just worried. I reckon I think if he goes away… it’ll be…” Kenny sighed and looked troubled, and Craig remembered suddenly why it was he had spent so long infatuated with him. His face was so lovely, particularly when it was fretful, and even if he was a fucked up kid he still had the look of someone who had grown up wearing straw hats and overalls and baking freckles on his skin in the sun. Summer looked good on him – he wore the last fading golds of the season like clothing, and it sparkled on his hair and in his eyes and in the comfy bronze tan on his skin.  “It’ll be strange I guess. I dunno what to say. Butters has been my best friend for years but I feel like when he decided to do all of this moving away shit, he didn’t even think about _me_.” He furrowed his brow and looked at Craig thoughtfully. “Sorry for telling you this. I guess mostly I just needed you to come so you could listen to me talk about it. I guess I’m feeling really screwed over about the whole thing – its hard to be a supportive friend when you want to punch him in the head every time he talks about it.” he curled the corners of his mouth up, but the small smile didn’t reach his eyes. Craig nodded and looked away, unsure if he should be touched or uncomfortable, that Kenny had chosen _him,_ of all people, to go to.

“Are you jealous?” he asked. And Kenny nodded. He saw it in his peripheral, even though his gaze was fixed on a bird in a fur tree a few feet away.

“Sure am. But that’s not it. I guess the problem is… even the people who are meant to care about me the most leave me. Even my closest friends.”

Craig puzzled over this for a moment, letting his eyes wander from the bird flitting joyfully up to the branches that criss-crossed above it, eventually climbing the point of the tree and into the heart of the sky. It was almost midday, the sun had passed from behind the thin cover of cloud and was at its peak, but still it was shadowy down here among the trees and it was a little cold. Autumn cold. He shivered.

“You have lots of friends.”

“Yeah, sure I do. But Butters is my _best_ friend and - ” he faltered, clearly wrestling with some kind of internal conflict that Craig willed him to win. Craig was on Kenny’s side with his, he really truly was, and he only wanted the absolute best for him but unfortunately, that meant the boy would have to come to terms with a few inconvenient things.

After a pause of about twenty seconds he sighed and gave in.

“… What’s it like, Craig? To have a crush on a friend?”

Craig tried not to respond to that too dramatically.

“Strange.” He answered, trying his best to be honest about the whole thing. “Sort of unreal. It feels like you aren’t yourself anymore, and they aren’t the same. In a way I guess it reminds me of waking up from a really vivid dream, and you get confused about whether reality is real or if you’re still dreaming. Maybe you will wake up and everything will be back to the way it used to be.”

“I can’t remember how it used to be.”

“Yeah, but surely it hasn’t always been this way?” Craig arched an eyebrow at Kenny, who averted his eyes discretely. Craig remembered when Butters was ten - skinny and dorky and subject to harsh bullying. It was impossible to imagine _anyone_ , let alone Kenny McCormick, harbouring a fancy for him at that time.

“I suppose not. But I think… we’ve always been really close, you know? And I didn’t even realise until he said he was going that I don’t know how to _be_ without him. He’s always been like this safe island in the shit ocean that is my world.  He’s always had a warm house, and good food, and he’s always so _cheerful_ all the time even when I get drunk or stoned or stuck in a fight with someone. He’s like… my Mom. Except pretend like that comparison wasn’t completely fucked up.”

It was hard not to smile at how brisk and embarrassed he was, when it came to matters that weren’t directly related to alcohol or fucking.

“I’ll allow it. How long have you… you know?”

 _Liked him_.

“I dunno. I mean, I don’t even know if I _do_. I don’t know if I can ‘like’ anybody. I don’t know what it feels like, or how I should be acting. Should I tell him? Sometimes I think I should tell him. But he’s so goddamned _heterosexual_ and I really don’t want to ruin our friendship. And now he’s going, and I feel like I’m running out of time. I feel like everything is changing. Like _I’ve_ changed. And when summer ends…”

“Nothing will ever be the same?” Craig interjected, finishing his sentence before he had the chance to. “Or maybe, like you will never be the same, and everyone will just return to normal around you like nothing ever happened, and you don’t know which is scarier because you’ve passed the point of no return but feel like nobody else has noticed.”

Kenny nodded silently, staring at the ballast stone beneath him and tracing knots in the wood of the sleepers with his fingers.

“I feel so much older.” He  said, after a while. Craig had been lost watching thin clouds scud over the midday sky, and when he heard Kenny’s voice he thought it sounded clearer and more ringing than it ever had before. “I feel so, so old. Which is real fucking dumb because I’m only sixteen. In five years I will probably be embarrassed, that I even said all that.”

“Yeah? Same.” Craig smiled at him wanly, and Kenny smiled back, and they sat there for a moment in silence hunting for an answer or an explanation or _something_ in each others eyes.

Nothing was forthcoming. After a while, Craig looked away and when he checked his watch he saw that nearly fifteen minutes had passed.

“We can talk more about it.” he said, standing and dusting his jeans off. The bones in his knees creaked when he stood, and he offered Kenny his hand to help him up even though it was tricky to find his own footing on the crumbling ballast. “Lets head over that way, through the forest, and you can walk me back home.”

Kenny acquiesced, but stood on his own accord.

“Okay. And hey, Craig?”

“Mmm?”

“I’m sorry. That I didn’t like you in that way. Like I said, I don’t know if I can like anyone…”

Craig brushed it off like it didn’t matter. It didn’t. Not today, and not ever again in the future.

“It’s okay.”

They made their way through the woods back to Craig’s street, chatting easily about friends, and girls, and the little things that made being alive worthwhile. They passed by houses of many of their classmates on the way. Bebe, and Clyde, and Cartmans… the strange thing, Craig thought aloud, about really small towns, was that everyone knew where everyone else lived, even if they would never spend their time together outside of school. In a strange and inconsequential kind of a way, he found that comforting, and the comment made Kenny smile.

“Sometimes I wonder what its like to live someone else’s life. Like if I snuck into their house in the middle of the night, and no-one noticed it was me and not Kyle. Or Red. Or Bebe.”

“I think they would notice.”

“Yeah? Same.” He grinned and scuffed his feet on the sidewalk – they were drawing closer to Craig’s street now, and the houses were looking more familiar. They passed the bus stop Craig and Tweek had met at to go to the mall a couple of days prior, and when they did Craig remembered to tell him.

“By the way. I think Tweek and me… I think maybe we are dating?”

“Oh hey! Congratulations. I mean, he’s kind of fucking weird and all that, but-“

“Yeah yeah. Okay.” Craig punched him lightly and Kenny sniggered – his mood seemed to have lifted considerably. There was a lot to be said for just sitting down and telling someone what was on ones mind.

They were just around the corner from Craig’s place when Kenny inhaled sharply and stopped him, grabbing his wrist so he would not walk out from behind the neighbours parked odyssey and directly into the line of sight of the house three doors down and across the street.

“Isn’t that Wendy’s?” He asked suspiciously, peering at the figures standing on the porch quite close, like they were engaged in intimate conversation.

“I think so? It’s her dads. I think her mom is on the other side of Clyde’s.”

The Testaburgers had divorced a year or so earlier, although Craig couldn’t begin to imagine why because the two of them were still ‘dating’ one another. It seemed kind of strange to him, but he hadn’t made any effort to pry.

“Is that Stan do you think? Loitering like a behemoth freshly put out to stud?”

Craig dared to suspect not. There was only one person that thick and formidable in South Park, and it certainly, definitely was not Stan.

“No way. That’s Cartman.”

Kenny and Craig stood in silence as Wendy levered herself onto tippy toes to kiss him, a brief and fugitive contact as though she was afraid that this congress might be witnessed. As soon as it was done, she was backing away, and when she slipped back into the house Cartman lingered on the doorstep, checking left and right to make _certain_ no one had seen, before he slinked down the stairs and across the lawn and into the Buick pickup parked in her driveway. Kenny made them wait behind the family wagon while he started his vehicle and until a good two minutes after he had driven away.

It was all so strange, the things that were going on around him this summer. So _strange_.

Craig could hardly believe he wasn’t dreaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also now creek is (kinda??? I cant tell and its making me suspicious) canon, i guess this story is an AU???
> 
> if i had foreseen this when i started writing this fic a year ago, i think i would have made some details different. 
> 
> Anyway. Just one more chapter and an epilogue to go, and then i move on to new projects. such fun!


	21. Would you like to come back with me to my house and see my stamp collection???

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY SO YOU (YES YOU) SHOULD PROBABLY READ THIS NOTE:
> 
> You may (or may not) have noticed, but this chapter is actually significantly shorter than usual, and for this there is a reason both thrilling and complex.
> 
> Around the middle of this chapter, you will find yourself stumbling upon a link which will take you to a page (my tumblr) which hosts the central, significantly more P O R N O G R A P H I C segment of chapter whatever it is we are up to at this point in time. you are more than welcome to read it if you feel the inclination, however you are also more than welcome to not. My reasons for posting the smut separately are as follows
> 
> A: some people just dont like having reckless perversion thrust unceremoniously down their throats, and i respect that  
> B: in relation to A, i decided it would be unfair to switch the rating on this story from M to E if persons who are disinclined to read the pornographic bits had already started reading the fic up until now  
> and C: i was undecided when i started writing this chapter if the porn was even totally necessary to the overall plot, or if it simply serves to add erotic interest for some readers. I mean, i get that for those of you who want to read about craig and tweek fucking, the actual intercourse is kind of the climax (teehee) of the story, so i knew i couldnt exactly leave it out, but then again i was not entirely convinced that the story as it is couldn't just comfortably lead into some kind of conclusion, as i think it is safe to say that by this point in the narrative arc the pair of them are quite comprehensively dating. if that was the case, wouldnt this whole chapter therefore be unnessecary? should i just have posted the whole thing on tumblr as an optional extra for those of you who wanted to read it?
> 
> and then i realised i was thinking way to hard about this. for which i most gravely apologise. 
> 
> Lets begin.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> UPDATE NOVEMBER 2017 : It has come to my attention that some folks have had problems reading the smut section through the tumblr app. I reccommend using your browser to acess this, at the URL handbagmurderDOTtumblrDOTcom forwardslash CONL
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read and loved this story so far. :)

 

Craig couldn’t remember in all his life an earlier seasonal snow.

He had always loved the snow, the light on the horizon and the dry chill in the air, and the way that everything sparkled when it snowed even when he was sad or sore or lonely. The usually grey and rainy end of summer had given way to a premature wonderland of frost and early sunrises, and the change in weather meant that Craig was sleeping significantly less. He was drinking more water. He was thinking clearer and seeing things with eyes that seemed to never have seen anything before.

One morning, at six am, he had no other choice but to bundle himself in a jacket and scarf and head on over to Tweek bros. coffee, despite not having another shift there until the weekend. Nights working had been significantly more enjoyable recently – he was pretty much getting paid to make out in the booth under the window and last time going at it Tweek had even succeeded in grabbing his ass and giving him a hella boner – but even so he still felt an odd kind of restlessness when he wasn’t spending time with his workmate. He supposed this was only normal in the first few weeks. Over time, it would settle down, and he knew he would be able to function alone for extended periods again, but for now he just wanted to enjoy the whirlwind. Enjoy the snow. Smell the scent of the approaching winter and the fresh alpine breeze that carried down from the mountains onto him.

Tweek’s dad was surprised to see him. He pressed a hazelnut latte into Craig’s hand and told him that Tweek was still at the house, sleeping.

As such, it was almost 6.30am and the sun was almost completely risen, when Craig arrived on the doorstep and knocked for him. 

“Craig?” He seemed surprised to see him, answering the door in a singlet and a pair of grey sweatpants that looked like he had just grabbed them out of his laundry basket. “What? What’s happened? Is there something wrong? Oh my god, did something happen at work?”

Craig felt a bit stupid really. And sort of guilty, for giving him such an unexpected start. He seemed dishevelled - unshowered and ungroomed. His hair was flat on one side and much too poofy on the other. Alarmingly, he was holding a butter knife and a bottle of dish soap in each hand – what the hell was he doing with those at this hour of the morning? Craig didn’t want to know.

“What? No! Nothings wrong. I couldn’t sleep. I thought you might be at work but your dad said you were at home. I figured I would come by and see if you were awake.”

“… Okay? I mean, sure. Yes. Come in. Want breakfast? I was making French toast.” He held up the knife and the soap, and Craig looked at him incredulously.

“Hopefully not with those?”

“Uh… no. I mean, I used the knife, briefly. The soap is… uh… I don’t know why I have this. I don’t remember picking it up.” He placed it promptly down on the porch step and ushered Craig indoors. In the house, it was fabulously warm – Tweek’s family must have had insulation and electric heating.

“Sorry. Sorry I just got out of bed. I’m feeling a little bit disorientated.”

“It’s okay.” Craig placed his empty hazelnut latte cup on the decorative corner table in the foyer and started stripping off his layers of insulation. “I’m sorry for bothering you, but this snow is so fucking cool I wanted to check if you’d noticed.”

He realised then, that he sounded kind of desperate and lovestruck – like a young teenager infatuated with a pretty movie star. Fortunately, Tweek seemed charmed.

“It’s strange to see you excited about something.” He said, helping Craig hang his jacket on the coat hook. “Usually you’re just  so chill and sombre.”

Craig shrugged this observation off and tried to pull himself together. It wouldn’t do, to show up on a boys doorstep gushing before seven in the morning. It really, really, really wouldn’t do at all.

“Yeah okay. But really though. Look at it.”

This made Tweek laugh, and he directed Craig through to the kitchen where sure enough, the stacks of bowls and floury handprints indicated that Tweek had been making efforts in the kitchen. Possibly since an hour or so previously.

“God. It looks like there’s been some kind of a natural disaster in here.”

“Yeah… I have a hard time with baking and cooking at home. You know at the shop you have all of the pre mixed ingredients there ready, and you just have to mix them and put them in the over. But _here_ you have to follow this dumb thing and make sure everything is measured right and ugh.” He tossed a cookbook impatiently into the sink. “Its too much pressure.”

“… I don’t think you need all of this to make French toast?” Craig eyed the blender and the box of flour and the desiccated coconut in bemusement. Tweek shrugged and informed him he had been trying to make muffins, originally.

“Aren’t you worried you will wake your Mom?”

“She’s already awake. I dunno if you noticed but no one in this household had really regular sleeping hours. I think she’s in her room painting?” he turned his back to Craig and continued trying to do whatever it was he was doing with a generous ramekin of sugar and cinnamon. Craig sat down at the dining table, overwhelmed by the flurry of activity this early in the morning, and looked overhead at the bright yellow bulbs in the kitchen light piece.

“I was going to ask if you wanted to go for a walk.” He said. “Make a snow man. Snow alien maybe. If you wanted to.”

Tweek hummed, and broke an egg into his mysterious cinnamon concoction.

“Sure. Lets just eat something first though. I’m starving.”

 

…

 

Seven surprisingly delicious pieces of French toast and maple syrup later, Craig was watching Tweek suit up against the weather and swallow down his morning dose of pills, which he did with no more shyness or discomfort than the first time Craig had watched him swallow them. It was a different batch this time – three in total. Tweek assured him that two of them were aspirin, before going on to ponder if it was possible to be addicted to such an unexciting medicine.

Probably not, Craig said, and they headed out into the snowy wonderland just before 7.30am.

The sun rising over the mountains was blindingly bright – more than it had been earlier that morning, and Tweek gestured to Craig that it would probably be best for them to move around the back of the house, into the yard, in order to avoid seeing the neighbours popping out in underwear and robes to collect their newspapers from the curb. Craig was okay with this, he had never been around the back of Tweek’s before even as a child. When they rounded the back of the house and Tweek opened a low, picketed gate to let him through into the yard he wasn’t anticipating any particular surprises – he had always assumed it would look the same as the backyard at his house. Or the backyard at Jimmy’s, or Clyde’s.

“Oh shit!” he was impressed to see that the Tweaks, unlike his own household, kept a very neat vegetable garden in the backyard, in large planter boxes raised about a foot off the ground. The back fence was covered in what looked like creeping roses, although the brambly branches were naked of leaves and flowers, and toward the far side of the space a humble brick patio, complete with bird bath, slept beneath the shadow of a bare cherry tree. “This is kind of cool. You know, our back yard just has a few bushes and a lot of dead guinea pigs buried in it.”

This made Tweek laugh. He felt himself flushing proudly and followed his friend ( _boyfriend?_ ) across the snow covered lawn to the patio area, which seemed a little less weighted under a blanket of white.

“Well, after the snow I think _our_ yard may as well be the same. The vegetables will be dead now, and dad will have to dig them all up. Frostbite, and all that.” He smiled wanly and came to a stop next to the birdbath, which was unsurprisingly frozen over, and reflecting the sparkling arc that was the morning sky. When he talked, his breath crystallised on the air in front of him. “God knows why the winter came so early, this year.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Craig poked the frozen surface of the birdbath just to see how cold it was, and was alarmed when his finger broke through the fragile shell of clear ice on the surface, and plunged into the frigid water below. “I bet this place is really pretty in summer.”

“It’s a good place to come and think. You know. Finding the centre, that sort of thing.”

Craig nodded and wiped his wet finger on his jeans. He was eyeing up the knobbly looking cherry tree in the corner, considering asking if it would be okay for him to climb it, when Tweek slipped away from his side and headed toward the planter boxes a few feet away.

“Here.” He said casually, leaning over the box and plucking a few pods from a trellis standing at the back. “Try these.”

He pressed them into Craig’s hand expectantly, and puzzled Craig held one up to inspect it. it looked like a seed pod, the kind that rattle when they got dry and brown in the summer time. He sniffed the thing, and Tweek’s lip quirked upward. He plucked the pod from Craig’s fingers and placed it neatly in between his teeth.

“Snap Peas.” He reported, biting into the pod and offering it back to Craig as though that wasn’t totally a weird thing to do at all. “They are a bit frosty, but we better eat them now before they melt and rot.”

Craig furrowed his brow, but tried to copy him anyway – the pea pod was crunchy and indeed, slightly frozen. He found the taste to be surprisingly sweet and lush, in a way he hadn’t really experienced the word before.

“Not bad.” He said, undecided as to whether or not he actually liked it. Tweek grinned and knocked his foot against the side of the planter box sheepishly.

“My Mom gardens, I help.”

This revelation was for some reason, incredibly sweet. Craig filed it away in his slot for little tidbits of information about Tweek with a fluttering heart, and he returned the smile as best he could.

“So about that snowman?” he urged, and Tweek nodded.

“You do it, I will watch. I don’t want get hypothermia in my fingers.”

“You won’t get hypothermia.”

Tweek shrugged in a sort of apologetic way, that mad it clear that he _wanted_ to partake, but wasn’t sure he could. Or should. Craig wondered what would happen if he did. Would the fear of the consequences give him sleepless nights, until next week when he is still alive and he comes to terms with the fact that nothing bad had actually come of it? Maybe it was worth trying to cajole him. Perhaps it would be one of those rare ideas which would prove to be less terrible than they first appeared.

Craig bent down and picked up a fistful of snow in his bare hand. It was soft and powdery, but when he packed it onto a ball he felt cold water run down his wrists and into the sleeves of his shirt. His fingertips grew numb almost immediately, but he didn’t give this away. Instead he held out the wad of ice and looked at Tweek expectantly. If he stood here long enough, Tweek might start to feel uncomfortable and take it.

Confused, Tweek eventually held out his hand. Craig plopped the ball into his palm and immediately started making another.

“Pick a place and put it there. And we will build the snow man up around it.”

“… I said I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

“No, you said you were going to get hypothermia. And look. You’re holding that right now. And its fine.”

Tweek had to look closely at his hand, to make sure this was correct.

“… It’s all wet.”

“ _You’re_ all wet.” Craig stood up and waved his own ball of snow in Tweek’s face. “ _Go on_. I know you want to.” He couldn’t help but smile, even though he wanted to seem cool about it. Tweek huffed and trudged back across the yard, following the tracks the two of them had laid down before.

“How about under the tree.” He said shortly, dropping the snow clump in the approximate location of the cherry tree Craig had admired earlier and wiping his wet hand on his jeans. Craig nodded and hobbled over to stand next to him.

“Okay. So now you just gotta keep doing that until we have a snow man.”

He passed Tweek another snow clump. At first he received a look of irritation in response, and he almost regretted trying to push him, but then Tweek dropped the snow wad next to the first one (where it became lost among the drift of snow around them) and said

“Fine. But when we are done making this snow guy, we are going to have to put someone’s clothes on him. And they aren’t going to be mine.”

Craig thought that was a compromise he was prepared to make.  

 

…

 

It was only nine am, but Craig felt the wetness of the snow in his bones and the heat of the places Tweek’s hands had brushed his by accident in almost every cell in his body. He could feel the steam rising off his damp jeans where he sat, cross legged in the snow watching Tweek sculpt the finishing touches on their snowman. Tweek christened him Elliot, and gave him Craig’s jacket. Craig grinned and beckoned him down into the snow next to him, where they both could look up at his crunchy, slightly muddied visage in awe. Craig would have happily stayed there forever, with his ass cheeks freezing like thick rump steaks, if Tweek hand scooped a chunk of snow up and slipped it down the back of his neck while he wasn’t looking.

Craig hollered and knocked his hand away, and a wet, slightly uncomfortable wrestling match ensued.

It was a shame, that the perfection of the morning hadn’t lasted, and that the snow had started melting almost the second the sun had reached a high point in the sky.

“You can’t do that!” Craig insisted, his breath short and his chest heaving, when Tweek pinned him down and straddled him. All the squirming in the world couldn’t shift the surprisingly powerful body that blotted out his view of the sky. “You’re bigger than I am!”

“Boo-hoo. What a shame. Life isn’t always fair, man.” He released Craig’s hands and pushed his hair out of his eyes, and Craig struggled to sit himself upright, his heart at his throat and his head spinning a little at how easy it had been for Tweek to list him and push him down against the frozen ground. Quite against any expectations a bystander might have, the boy was strong, and to match his handsome face and heart melting smile his arms were firm, and unexpectedly sexy. Craig’s arms were skinny and weak like udon noodles. He was suddenly quite self conscious about his underwhelming physique.

“Yeah. I’ll say.”

Tweek sniggered and rolled off him, landing with a reasonable amount of poise and pulling his legs under himself.

“Watch you don’t get hypothermia in your ass.” Craig warned him. Although his concern over hypo-anything had decreased significantly since they had started snowman construction.

“Shut up. Don’t jinx it.” he sighed and gazed back up at the snowman, and Craig thought that he looked tired, but very happy – like he was delighted with what they had accomplished, so far today.

“You know, I never thought I would meet anyone who liked me enough to want to hang out with me like this.” He said pleasantly. “I mean, it seemed really difficult. To get someone to like me _normally_ even. Let alone for someone to like me enough to come over at 7am just to build a snowman in my backyard.”

Craig shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal, even though he felt a little swell of pride at hearing it.

“I dunno. What do you want me to say? I didn’t see it coming either. I like spending time with you.”

“Lucky I like spending time with you too. But you know, I worry we will run out of things to do. Do I have to think of a new date every time? Because I’m going to square with you, that’s super unreasonable and no way. Not happening. I can’t”

Craig laughed and raked his hand through the melting snow they were sitting in, to check the consistency.

“Nah. I have plenty of ideas. We can go for a walk in the woods next time. And take photos of cool trees and shit.”

“Cool trees? How about nymphs and fairies and UFOs? I head someone saw a bigfoot in the mountains near the pass a few weeks ago.”

This was news to Craig, but he was unsurprised to hear Tweek report it as though he was reporting facts.

“Yah, sure. We can go see bigfoot. If you believe in that?” he arched his eyebrow in question, and Tweek gave him a cryptic smile that betrayed nothing either way. He reached forward and brushed his hand against Craig’s forehead, to move his hair out of his eyes. His fingers were so cold they reminded Craig of all the ancient corners of outer space, crammed and bursting at the seams with stardust.

“I don’t have a choice. There are real things more mysterious and unexpected in this world, don’t you think?”

Craig thought of Cartman and Wendy, on Wendy’s doorstep a few days earlier, and decided that that observation was quite erudite. “True.”

He let the other boy run his fingers over the bridge of his nose and down over his upper lip in silence. The touch was pleasant and sensual, and even though Craig was chilly he felt heat stir in his belly.

“Are you cold?” Tweek asked him, withdrawing his hand. “We can go inside and watch a movie if you want. You can shower upstairs and I can shower in mum and dads ensuite.”

“We could shower together.”

“… We could.” He sounded unsure, but not opposed to the suggestion. “But I don’t think my parents would like that very much. And besides…”

The two of them hadn’t really talked about that sort of stuff yet. Craig had thought about it, sure, when they were alone in the store and Tweek had him pinned on the counter and it would have been so easy to press his mouth against his ear and whisper _fuck me._

He felt a swoop of embarrassment in his stomach, and immediately regretted suggesting it.

“Nevermind. We can do that thing that you said. I’ll need some spare clothes though… mine are… hm.” He looked down at his jeans, which were dark with wetness and grubby, and Tweek giggled.

“My clothes will be too big for you.”

“Well, I gotta wear something.”

“I can lend you a top but you’re going to have to stay in those pants. Here.” He leaned a little closer and placed his hand gently against the side of Craig’s thigh. Again, the chill of his fingers was startling. But not as startling as the sudden dryness that seemed to radiate from where he had laid his palm. The steam rose off the denim in pale coils, and when he pulled his hand back the wetness in the fabric was gone. Whicked away. Craig stared open mouthed in shock, but Tweek just looked at his hand thoughtfully for a moment. Like he had never really noticed the dry patch on the side of his finger before, where he held the milk jug on the coffee machine, or the creases running over the fleshy bump at the base of his thumb.

“I think we can work something out.” He said eventually. Craig snapped his mouth shut and swallowed the swooping, vertigo feeling that rose up the ladder of his spine.

When they went back to the house and Tweek provided him with a towel and a clean grey t-shirt, he pretended like he hadn’t seen anything.

 

…

[Click here for unmitigated and unapologetically explicit content](http://handbagmurder.tumblr.com/CONL)

...

 

Craig lay in the bed with his head on Tweek’s lap, pulling at threads on the hems of the bed sheets and thinking about the school year ahead of him. For the first time, he didn’t shy away from wondering who he would be sat next to in form class, and who he would eat lunch with in the canteen, and he wondered if Tweek had given any further thought to the subject himself yet, or if he had just been avoiding it like Craig had. He had said he didn’t like to think of it, after all.

Maybe he had been waiting for Craig to ask.

“Summer finishes soon.” He said, turning his face up and looking to the other boy, who looked handsome even from this unflattering angle with his hair tied up and a lit cigarette pinched between his fingertips.

“I know,” Tweek exhaled and offered Craig his smoke, which Craig declined, so he stubbed it out in the empty water glass on his bedside table. “You know, before summer started, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back.”

“Really?!” Craig was shocked. He had a moment to imagine school without Tweek, the empty seat in his classes and missing his face in the lunch line during break, but these thoughts were dismissed when he continued. Although Craig was just as shocked by how hurt he had been by such a suggestion - he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.

“Yeah. I’m not the best a school. I panic under test conditions and can never remember the answers to quizzes and that kind of thing. But mostly, I guess I wanted to quit because… uh…” he shifted uncomfortably and Craig moved back a little, so he had space to slide down and lie beside him under the blankets.

“Because what?”  
“… I didn’t have any friends.” He shrugged and made himself comfortable, and Craig felt his cheeks warm and his stomach flutter – the way he moved was so lovely and fluid, it was hard to believe that just twenty minutes ago, he had let this boy come inside him despite the fact that prolonged fucking was actually incredibly uncomfortable. Not all it was cracked up to be in movies. During those moments, Tweek had been shaking and jerky with his movements, but now he lifted his hands with the awkward grace Craig loved and he pulled his hair from his topknot with the same. Craig watched him slide the hair elastic onto his wrist and as soon as he had his head on the pillow Craig was sidling against him and letting his cheek press against the warmth of Tweek’s chest.

“Well, you can hang out with me and my friends if you want. I mean, I get if you don’t want to they are kind of dicks…”

“No, it’s okay. I mean, your friends… are okay. But I think I would rather just do it like always. I don’t like being a part of a group to be honest. It’s intimidating.”

“Well you need to have more people to talk to in the world than me.”

Tweek smiled and combed a long piece of fringe out of Craig’s eyes.

“I will work on it. I could talk to Kyle. Excepting that time when we were ten he’s always been kind of nice to me. Whenever he isn’t with Stan.”

Craig nodded in agreement, letting Tweek fiddle thoughtlessly with his hair.

“Kyle is weird when he’s around Stan. All of us, me and the guys that is, reckon he’s kind of in love with him.”

“Oh god, really? That’s awkward. Wendy would be so mad if she knew.”

Craig, however, remembered Wendy and Cartman on Wendy’s doorstep the other afternoon, and thought that once upon a time she may have. But things change as time passes, and people fall in and out of love, and it probably wouldn’t be long before the single social constant throughout primary and high school, that is the relationship between Stan Marsh and Wendy Testaburger, would fragment and dissolve and become a memory lost to the passage of time. And no one would be sad about it, least of all Wendy and Stan.

“Maybe. I think it’s more complicated than that. High school romance doesn’t last forever, you know?”

Tweek fell silent for a moment, and Craig listened closely to the sound of his heart beating in his chest. It was surprisingly slow, no faster than Craig’s own, and Craig wondered if he should tell him he could hear it and draw attention to this moment of intimacy, or pretend like it was normal to hear someone’s lifeblood rushing around their body. He decided to remain quiet and curled an arm around Tweek’s waist instead.

“Nothing lasts forever. But at the risk of sounding like a joke I should probably tell you I could lie here with you for all eternity.”

Craig smiled and pressed his face hard against smooth, warm chest.

“No pressure though, right? No world shattering endless profession of undying love?”

The laugh he got back was gentle and affectionate. Warm arms cradled his upper body and drew him closer, and under the sheets their legs tangled together. Tweek buried his nose against the crook of Craig’s neck and kissed there, soft, teasing kisses that spread up his neck and to his ears in a manner that Craig found most arousing.

“No pressure at all.” 


	22. EPLIOGUE: The little grey fragments of nebulae which fall to earth and glitter like diamonds on the windowpane.

It was a cold morning.

Craig was wearing a scarf and carrying a thermos of hot soup. He sat on his doorstep with his backpack full of sandwiches and coke cans and a brand new exercise book to write on. Across the road, on the corner, he could see children standing by the bus stop waiting, and this time last year he had been among them but between all the things that had happened this summer new developments on the vehicle licensing front meant that and now he was sitting on his doorstep waiting, checking his phone periodically to make sure that Token and his shiny new Mercedes had not been caught up in some kind of altercation on the drive over.

When the vehicle drew up next to the curb, Craig was discretely impressed. The car was shiny. It looked like it cost exactly the amount of money he was sure it cost. He stood up and crunched through the thin layer of snow on his lawn to the passenger door, and after spotting Bebe and Clyde already in the backseat, he decided he might as well sit up front, with the driver.

“Nice car.” He commented, and Token gave him an unnecessarily cocky grin.

“Thanks. Nice Haircut.”

Craig gave him a partial smile, a little unsettled by how quickly he had noticed that a: Craig was not wearing his usual hat and b: he had recently had a haircut. He did up his seatbelt, and tried to stay calm. Collected. Totally in control of his emotions. In his pocket, his phone vibrated, and he was unsurprised to see it was Tweek who was sending him a message this early in the morning. No one else would have any need to contact him before 9am.

“Does anyone want coffee?” he checked his phone, and as per instruction asked his company if they might be tempted as they pulled out onto the road. Token replied in the affirmative, Clyde and Bebe did not. He replied to Tweek, saying he would also like a drink and if he felt like grabbing a cappuccino for Token that would be cool too, and sat back and tried relaxed for the remainder of the drive.

School was busy when they arrived. Girls who had gotten taller and curvier since June had excited reunions in the middle of the halls. Boys who had gotten bulkier, squarer, or more assertive clapped each others shoulders and made eyes at pretty girls they had never seen before. Craig said goodbye to Clyde and Bebe, who needed to report to the office to organise a locker to share between them, but Token followed Craig through the throng of people to his pre-arranged locker next to the science labs. When he checked his watch, he saw it was getting very close to eight twenty five.

“Don’t say anything offensive.” He reminded his friend as they drew closer. Token held up his hands defensively, as though the thought of doing so had never crossed his mind.

“Dude. It’s cool. I will lay off.”

“Hm.” Craig felt a flutter of nervousness in his chest, but he tried to walk as tall and confidently as possible. Around him, standing at least a foot shorter than he was, a group of freshmen he had never seen before darted and ducked with anticipation. He had hardly registered their exuberance before he spotted a figure even taller than himself down the hall.

Without meaning to, he sped up, and stumbling through a vocal gaggle of sophomore girls Token followed suit. They came to a halt in front of both of locker 247 and the boy, who was wearing a navy beanie and a black cardigan that finished past his knees. Tweek grinned when he first saw him, and then, spotting Token, he reined it back a little to a tentative smile. He chewed black polish of his thumbnail as he offered Craig the tray of coffees he was holding – one a large hazelnut latte, and the other a cappuccino, just as Token had ordered.

“It comes out of your pay check.” He teased, and Craig rolled his eyes. He tried very hard to stay calm, but in all honestly his stomach was doing cartwheels of excitement.

This was it. This was really, seriously it.

Token stood beside him and cleared his throat hesitantly.

“Thanks for this.” He said politely, gesturing to the coffee. Tweek’s eyes fluttered and an expression of surprise passed over his face.

“No problem.” He dropped his hand from his mouth and gave token a slightly warmer smile. “Sorry if it’s a little cold.”

“It’s fine.” He took the cup Craig offered him, and awkwardly, like he didn’t know what to do next, he stood there looking between the two of them and waiting for an indication could go now. Or should go. Whatever. Craig was a little embarrassed, but he thought as he gave Token a little wave that that whole interaction could have gone a whole lot worse than it did. As far as first-civil-conversations went, it actually had gone pretty well.

As soon as Token was out of sight, Tweek’s demeanour changed rather dramatically. He sighed and slumped against the locker, as though the effort required to come across as shy-but-polite had caused him great exhaustion, but as he bemoaned how embarrassed he was and how terrifying the exchange between them had been, Craig could tell from his flush that he was also pleased with the way that had gone. At least Token hadn’t called him anything offensive. Or looked at him like he was about to strip and start some kind of satanic ritual in the hall.

“Token is cool.” Craig assured him, his heart beating at the base of his throat. “Like I said, you will get to know him better if you hang out with us some time.”

“Baby steps first Craig. Jesus Christ. I still need to warm up to them at school first.” Tweek sighed and cocked his head in the direction of Craig’s locker. “Are you going to put your stuff in there?’

“Oh. Right. Here.” He passed Tweek back his own coffee, in order to free his hands to throw his backpack and his soup thermos into the locker with a clang. The people in the hall were starting to thin, and the more and more the chequered floor of the school hallway became visible the more and more Craig felt himself slipping back into the reality of school time. The smell of the disinfectant used by the cleaner. The noise of hundreds of teenagers flitting and chatting through the halls.

This was it. A whole, fresh year stretching before him. And Tweek was standing next to him, not just as a fiend but as a boyfriend. And even though he knew no-one was watching them he felt like the centre of everyone’s attention, standing new and naked and vulnerable in the middle of the hall.

He slammed his locker closed, secretly exhilarated and secretly terrified, and gave Tweek a small and rather embarassed smile.

“Looking forward to it?” he asked.

Tweek smiled sheepishly, and shrugged. He passed Craig back his coffee.

“I’m nervous.” He said. “I cold use a distraction.”

“That’s forward.” Craig couldn’t help but be endeared to him, and relieved that he wasn’t the only one afraid. He glanced around to see who was in the hall to witness, but then realised that he probably shouldn’t care –swallowing his doubts he leaned in close and gave Tweek a kiss on his lips briefly, and it was worth it to feel time come to a standstill for a split second. Like there was no one else but him and Tweek in the entire world. No matter how good or bad things got this year, at least he would always have this moment.

Tweek sniggered, the little puff of air from his nose tickling the furrow between Craig’s nose and his mouth, and still smiling nervously Craig pulled back from him.

“Better?” he asked, eyebrow rising. Tweek nodded. Craig made a point of not checking to see who might have spotted them, right now, he didn’t want to know.

“Your phone is about to go off.” Tweek observed, as Craig turned away and locked his locker with the combination padlock he had gotten from the hardware stop last Friday. “It’s Kenny.”

“What does he want?” Craig fished his phone out of his pocket, and the two of them started down the hall towards their form rooms.

“I dunno. You tell me.”

Three or four seconds later, his phone went off, and sure enough Kenny’s number flashed up as the sender.

“He probably wants to know if I know of anyone in his homeroom or something.” Craig crammed the phone back into his pocket, and ignored the text. “Nothing important.”

“What if it’s about Butters?”

Craig shrugged.

“The guys gone. I dunno what else there is to say. Or to know.”

Tweek came to a stop out side of what was usually an art room, and made a face that indicated to Craig he ought to stop here. Craig still had a few more rooms to go. Behind him, Craig spotted Wendy Testaburger duck into the classroom. Her hair looked sleek, and her face unreadable, and for a moment Craig was aware that he could very easily shout her secret aloud at her right now if he wanted to. He could call it out in public, so that everyone and anyone may know.

But he didn’t want to.

Maybe it was sympathy, empathy, or decency, or maybe Craig just didn’t give a fuck, but the thought of doing such a thing brought him no pleasure. He reached forward and gave Tweek’s hand a reassuring squeeze, in order to help the anxiousness he was showing on his face instead.

“I will have an amazing year with you.” He promised, “You gave me the best summer of my life.”

And Craig knew this because he remembered his summers, he remembered them as though he had lived them all one after the other, and all those moments and events that had seemed worthwhile (Learning to ride a bike, visiting his aunts and uncles in Denver, punching cap councillor Dane and breaking his nose) seemed so inconsequential in comparison to the summer that had just passed him, and all the summers ahead, and even though he was only a young man he thought that right now, in _this_ moment, he wanted Tweek to be around for every one of them.

 

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the moment where i just take a minute to address you all, glorious readers, and thank you for following me on the journey that was this story!
> 
> thank you all so much for the comments, and the kudos, and the critique, advice, support and feedback you have all given me over the past year. I am so glad to have managed to finish this - i have never completed a continuing story of this length before, and without motivation in the form of comments and messages and kudos i don't believe i would have been able to do it. Thank you for taking the time and reading this work - i apologise for its problems, its inconsistencies and flaws, and for the little plot threads that never really came together in the end. I apologise for patches of bad writing, for the sub par editing and moments of OOCness which proliferate in this text, and i have a list of a million other things to apologise for but i cant remember them all at this time. At the end of this story, there are so many things i wish i had done differantly, but at the same time if i had the chance to write it again.... 
> 
> lol, i was going to say i would write it exactly the same, but thats a lie. if i could write it again i would try my best to write it WAY BETTER. alas, this can never come to pass. i have other projects to begin and finish, and other weird daydreams to entertain. 
> 
> See you next time. :D


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